RP:Chewing Out the Kensai

Part of the Saurian Onslaught Arc

Summary: Gevurah chews out Kasyr for his error before the drow and mage’s guild counterattack on the Razurath in Trist’oth.

House D’Artes

Kasyr might have had the opportunity to chug healing potions like they were cheap booze, but he's still managed to cultivate an air of disrepair all the same. It's not the clothes, either, though the jacket he's still sporting from his ventures back and forth between trist'oth and Xalious -does- look fairly rumpled. No, there's something which just hangs over the swordsman like a pall, which only seems to be mirrored in the haggard expression he carries as he alternates between reading notes, and jotting down some of his own on the desk in the guest room. A part of him absolutely craves a whiskey in that moment, but for the life of him, he feels the need to abstain, if only because he can't afford to be inebriated in that moment.

Gevurah :: At the Temple of Endless death there has been a 24/7 endeavor to salvage every last piece shard of wood. Matron Gevurah spends an inordinate amount of time standing on the shattered roof and keep watching over the dozens of slaves who could take weeks or months to find every splinter. She is there now ensuring that no low-born cretin dares steal a piece of her statue. Even a splinter would fetch a high price. When the matron cannot keep an eye on the project herself, Izzerin keeps watch for her. This morning, after killing two daring rogue slaves who dared pocket pieces of wood, Izzerin decided that all slaves must work in the buff. Cavity checks are frequent. Gevurah is at the temple when a servant from D’Artes informs her that Lord Kasyr has returned. “He is no lord,” hisses Gevurah as she blinks into a shadow and reappears in her temple in House D’Artes. She storms through the halls, hidden passageways, secret portals until she arrives in the guest quarters. “KASYR!” her voice booms under a priestly enchantment meant for oration in grand halls. Her palm extends forward, fingers twitching into a rigid, divine shape as an Ancient Drow symbol appears in black on her palm. Gevurah speaks a power word and the symbols shoots for from her hand like a dart, grows in size until it’s the size of a battering ram and blast Kasyr’s door clean off its hinges. She flies into his room and readies a second blast, this one sent for Kasyr’s chest to pin into the wall. “You have some nerve slithering back in here like a snake without showing you face to me! Coward!”

Kasyr may internally need to admit that whilst he isn't inebriated, he still may have tippled -slightly- to come to the conclusion that this would be a good idea, But then, he'd needed his notes, and books. Unfortunately, in the face of the billowing tempest of rage that has more or less bore down on his position in what would be impressive times. He's in the process of scooping papers and books off the desk and into his bag when the deafening roar of wood shattering fills the air, and cues his much honed talent of evasive maneuvers- with the swordsman diving for cover behind the bed. "Well. I wouldn't have been able to hear your displeasure if I had -immediately- arrived." The narrator is wondering if this is really the final words Kasyr wants to be remembered by. Whatever the case, despite the glib nature of the reply, there's not a whole lot to be read in the swordsmans face or voice, given it just sounds completely drained. And while he may be starting to ready himself to rise up, he's more or less expecting a follow up for what is undoubtedly going to be chalked up as (justifiably) murder-inducing impudence.

Gevurah is oblivious to the fact that Kasyr went deaf during the battle, and so his glib response sounds like the nonsense she’d expect from a brain as addled as his, a brain so malformed it thought it a good idea to enlist a murder-happy apprentice in a highly sensitive mission. Points for consistency to the supreme idiot. “I see you’ve never learned how to grovel. Let me impart the first lesson.” She flicks a two-handed sign language spell that is particular to the drow practice of dark priesthood. The spell only affects the undead by painfully tasing them with bolts of true death that ripples through unliving flesh in painful currents meant to debilitate and subjugate undead. However, unbeknownst to Gevurah, Kasyr is not currently undead and he feels absolutely nothing. Gevurah furrows her brow and in the moment that she studies him she notices something else: he’s tired (no, he’s -exhausted-), and he has still not yet healed, and he’s a little drunk, and he is glistening in the faerie light (it’s sweat, but the drow cannot even fathom such a thing on a vampire). “The hell is wrong with you?”

Kasyr looks down a bit where the bolts had passed through, morbidly expecting a pair of holes to be in him, and weirdly disappointed for a brief second. "Never one of my strong suits." The Kensai's not really able to parse that the gig is on the verge of being up, however, so he simply offers up a succinct, "Probably a lot." before straightening up and stepping away from the wall, "I can't deny that wholly overestimated her. When you'd mentioned she'd been capable of helping you with what was the lynchpin to your plan.." There's an offhandeded wave, and then he slides back against the wall. "So, I improvised. I did leave the obelisk...intact, though." Fun fact, the Kensai doesn't even know that the temple blew up. He simply -hasn't- even bothered to keep up.

Gevurah notices Kasyr’s disappointment that she did not puncture him and wonders if Kasyr is a typical masochist male drow stuck in a furry vampire’s body. It’s all coming together. She begins to relax as Kasyr ramps up to what sounds like an apology, but then the kensai swerves off the path and tries to blame Gevurah for having complimented Quintessa. She grabs a heavy obsidian ashtray from the bedside table and chucks it at his head. “Lynchpin!” she scoffs. “That girl could never brew a curse as powerful as mine! All she did was help the curse target Razurath so the likes of you,” she points at him condescendingly, “ wouldn’t succumb to it, but perhaps I needn’t have taken such care.” She bursts out in a venomous cackle when he mentions the obelisk. “Oh your stupidity astounds me. You think I give a shit about the obelisk?” She does, but Kasyr is best served not setting the record straight (which likely means the tipsy idiot will). “You have no idea what was in that temple, do you?” she hisses. “I forget sometimes that you are a child.” At 25 years old, he certainly is by the standard of drow lives.

Kasyr is probably in the middle of digging his grave a bit deeper when he ends up getting clipped upside the head mid-word, whatever that was on his mind seguing into a quick set of expletives. One hand moves up to sweep ashes out of his hair, and poke at where the tray hit, but the other stays clutched to his backpack. "If you hadn't given a damn, I could have bypassed the entire need for trying to be subtle!" You're... You're missing the point, Kas. Oh wait. "Temple . . .? What are you talking about?" The kensai's at least sounding exasperated. "I expected the same that was expected of me." And then he sags a little, "Which has been a sort of slow rolling mistake in general, really." God, he wishes he was out of here. There's a cabinet drawer full of whiskey waiting for him.

Gevurah pinches the bridge of her nose when Kasyr reveals his ignorance regarding the temple. “You and your bloodthirsty apprentice tipped off the Razurath long enough for them to prepare a spell, a meteor shower, that utterly destroyed the temple. MY temple,” she stresses in her heavy accent. She points eastward to indicate the once-massive building next door that has been reduced the rubble. “If you hadn’t alerted them to an attack, they never would have prepared that spell!” Gevurah has no way of knowing why or when the spell was prepared, but, in quiet moments when she is vulnerable to self doubt, her need for a scapegoat claws at her throat and eyes. The statue symbolized her father’s conquests, faith, and empire, a legacy which she inherited and, after the temple’s destruction, feels wholly inadequate the steward. But her self doubt is deeply private, not even her husband knows of it. And she can only live with that corrosive doubt by breaks off pieces of blame and handing them out like candy. Kasyr gets the largest share. “That statue inside the temple is one of the oldest known statues of Vakmatharas. It’s the symbol of my church’s power, you imbecile.” And a direct source of some of her higher-level spells, including that death curse, but Gevurah shares that with no one (again, her husband is also excluded).

Kasyr s' tongue has gravitated off to one cheek, that haggard look only seeming to sink in further as she clarifies what came about due to the events that came to pass, his head tipping back to stare at the ceiling, "I did my best to give you a warning, et to make things right in that moment." There's a broad gesture to one side as he adds, "And very clearly, I failed." He almost clicks his tongue, but instead settles on folding his arms, "Mes apologies. Hell, I'm sorry I didn't come back after. I thought things were settled, et it would be on to whatever next bit of business we have on our fast track to suic - success. Against a god. That."

Gevurah crosses her arms before her chest as Kasyr apologizes. Her gaze levels on him as she scans his face for sincerity and finds that bounty. His reference to their larger mission elicits a sigh. “There are some high order rituals that relied on that statue’s power. Without it, we lose that power in our mission against Caluss and Gospel. It’s a big loss.” She is careful not to reveal that any of her own power is compromised. “I am trying to salvage the statue, but then it needs to be repaired.” She shrugs in a rare show of defeat. “No one knows how the statue was made.”

Kasyr , since he's now not at the center of a tongue lashing, allows himself a bit more time to contemplate the problem posed by this situation, almost grateful for the prospect of something to solve, rather then needing to mull on things"..Es it a matter of materials, craftsmanship, or both?" Kasyr's gonna fetch that cigarette now, if only to begin smoking it, " Also, es there anything else that -needs- to be, or can be prepared in the interim?"

Gevurah shakes her head at his questions. “If I had to guess, given the nature of how these things are typically made, it was made by a master artisan whose skill unwittingly employed divine magic, using magical tools as well, a chisel, a plane, a hammer, perhaps. If we find the tools, if they can even be found, then perhaps an artisan can be hired. But.” She lets loose yet another long, haggard sigh. “For now, I have slaves picking through the rubble. There are some large pieces, but a lot of it has been splintered. I am not sure how much can be salvaged to begin with.”

Kasyr meanders over towards the desk, to finish collecting the books and papers he'd been collecting in the first place. He's -mildly- grateful he doesn't have to deal with a combination of late fees and damages to the Black Library of all things, " Well, if it was a magical wood, I'm aware of where a Ya-te-Veo...? I think that was it. Evil magical tree, enfin, in case not all the pieces are retrievable. ...Would you have any enslaved dryads- they'd apt to be useful for a retrieval of this sort." Kasyr pauses for a moment to contemplate what he just said, and then shakes his head, "I'll see if I can figure out some more options as well. ...Es there anything else? I'm intending on visiting a smith, but I'm unsure if they'd be of the caliber you're looking for."

Gevurah chuckles darkly when Kasyr mentions enslaved dryads. “Their trees don’t do well down here, unfortunately. We’ve tried, but they all die.” She eyes his books and notes but doesn’t have the energy to ask after his research, and whether or not it pertains to their mission. The statue’s destruction has briefly taken precedence over Caluss and Gospel. Without that power, they are handicapped. “That is all. Let me know about the smith.” Her gaze arrests his as she nods meaningfully, the matronly version of ‘we’re good’.