RP:Glyphs in the Mist

This is a Mage's Guild RP.

Summary: After killing two magical, glyph-spotted jaguars in Fog Forest, Lanlan can’t get the pelts to cast invisibility on the wearer. He is also drawn to the Fog Forest location where he found the jaguars and wants to return. As he works on the pelts, Gevurah drops by for a tense visit. It’s been over a week since their blowout argument after the Razurath Invasion of Trist’oth. Lanlan invites Gevurah to travel with him to Fog Forest and she agrees.

In the Fog Forest, they discover the same glyphs on the jaguars occur in the mist that surrounds an ancient tree at the heart of the forest. Gevurah discovers a rift in the material plane. Lanlan activates the glyphs and a cottage springs out from below the ground, under the tree’s roots. Lanlan and Gevurah go inside. The cottage is empty save for a skeleton. Lanlan pokes the skeleton with his wand and is attacked by goo! GOO! It grabs his face and melts into it. He is now possessed by a mysterious entity! Ah!

Gevurah, suspecting he is possessed, plays it cool and lures him back to Trist’oth, to her temple, where she is at the height of her power and can hopefully perform an exorcism. The entity inside Lanlan would prefer not to be exorcised and Lanlan and Gevurah have an epic magical fight. Throughout the fight, Gevurah is handicapped by the fact she does not want to kill Lanlan. Lanlan has no handicap. Gevurah realizes this battle only ends with one of them dying. Bad news: She comes close to dying! Good news: She escapes before she does.

Let’s Go On Another Arcane Date! (House D’l’sel’Dissan/House D’Artes)

Lanlan puzzles over two of his creations; a headdress made from a giant jaguar's face, and a cloak made from most of its back and forearms. When the mage's found this creature prowling in the mist of the fog forest, it was invisible. Until it died, it stayed invisible. The cause is clear, instead of spots, its tawny hide was speckled with black runes. It easily received and retained magic, but there was another element that was missing. He was wearing the headdress when his servant informed him that Gevurah was waiting for him in the foyer, should he show her up? "No, I'll go get her. Leave us," Lanlan directed through the closed door. This servant was smart. His knuckles tapped the door only lightly and then let Lanlan know what for immediately. Lanlan would appear from his study on his indoor balcony, two sets of eyes peaking over the railing. He crouched down into a prowl and began creeping down the steps. He could feel the magic of his jaguar headdress working, but this was magic he didn't understand. Perhaps just because he could plainly see himself didn't mean others couldn't? The whole time he silently stalked Gevurah, he was in plain sight. But looking extremely stylish.

Gevurah hadn’t seen Lanlan in over a week, not since the night of the Razurath attack. She’s been both busy dealing with the political fallout from the attack, and apprehensive about meeting Lanlan again after the argument they had. Even sex was not a powerful enough balm for every vile, hateful word he said and every humiliating thing she did to him in public. And yet, despite this apprehension, she missed him. Lanlan would enter her mind regularly throughout each day since she last saw him. Would it be possible for things to go back to the way they were? Should she even want that anymore, or is it a sign of weakness? Does she have a choice in what she wants? As she anxiously mulls over this internal debate, she sees Lanlan stalking down the stairs in a ridiculous get-up. She grins to herself as Lanlan seems returned to himself and engaged in yet another obscure magely project. “Is that an anti-stealth cloak? Are you meant to be more conspicuous than usual?”

Lanlan was keeping himself very occupied, and spending less time than usual in the Underdark. The realities of her marriage and the truths to which she illuminated him stirred up emotions he couldn't deal with. So he was focused on magical pursuits, exploration, and research. They almost always provided him a catharsis, even though his motivation came almost exclusively from knowing that Gevurah chose Daath over him because she didn't think he was strong. She would come to regret her decision without his help soon enough, but frankly, that wasn't soon enough. He missed her, but was conflicted. He was battling wanting to be with her all the time, and not letting her see him again until he'd achieved the results that would sway her back to him, and only him. He had to practice being aloof, because he knew what happens when he indulged his emotions. And cats are aloof! So he'd embody the jaguar, stalking its prey, and maybe that would also trigger the magic in the pelt. He's almost close enough to pounce, legs spring-loaded, when Gevurah calls him out. He hops and stumbles awkwardly down the last few steps. "Uh. No," he says flatly, "I'm trying to figure out why this pelt isn't making me invisible. I -should- be invisible. There's something missing. I have to go back to Rynvale." He played with the folded cloak he made from the other part of its hide. "Actually," he began bravely, "would you come with me? I might need your help."

Gevurah crosses the distance between them hurriedly as if compelled by some volatile, intense, adolescent feeling. At the last moment when she is close enough to kiss him, she turns her attention away from Lanlan’s face to stroke the jaguar’s head curiously. Her fingers trace the black runes. “Did you do this?” She circles him closely under the pretense of inspecting the cloak, and due to an honest need to be near him without revealing how much her body missed him (and perhaps failing). “What’s in Rynvale?” she asks with the interest of someone who has already decided to go with him. It’ll be like it’s always been between them before all of this Daath business. Zany adventures,and a strange rhythm of being unique to them.

Lanlan is flatfooted when she comes within arms length, he didn't think they could easily fall back into each other. He absently bends his arms at the elbows to catch her, until she diverts. "...Yes," he says, failing to hide his disappointment. "I mean no. It seems this specimen was born with glyphs instead of spots." He doesn't know what it means, that she seems so interested in this project, but she is, apparently. "Rynvale's where I found this creature, apparently responsible for a number of missing people in the Fog Forest. There, it was invisible, here it isn't." That she seems so interested, informs him at least that she will go with him, "So you'll come?" He says, excitedly, grabbing her hand to stop her from circling. He stares eye to eye awaiting an answer and slowly presses the jaguar cloak into her. "I have one for you too, then." He was going to wait until they got there, or maybe on the boat, but he couldn't. They were going to be jaguar twins.

Gevurah ‘s genuine interest in magical mysteries is about evenly nullified by her deep disinterest in ocean travel. Lanlan’s excitement pushes her to accept despite her aversion to the sea. Her affection for him swells when he takes her hand. Can it be this easy? Is he truly over the little problem of Daath? Lanlan breaks the tension as he always does, with a joke, and she laughs softly into the back of her hand as her gaze pulls warily away from him. She’s still smirking as she looks back at him, “I’m not wearing that where anyone can see me. But yes, I’ll go.” Suddenly she scowls at a private thought. “Do you have a way to get to Rynvale that isn’t by boat?”

Lanlan hated boat rides too, and generally everyone who was on the boat with him. That wouldn't be a problem for them, and he smiles cautiously, because they would hate everyone and the boat together. There was something else though, that he was trying to avoid acknowledging. For the short time they were here, he could theoretically avoid talking about Daath, thinking about Daath. But on a long voyage, it would be inevitable. "Fine," he says a little jilted, "You don't have to wear it then." Obviously it was a stylish piece, so if she didn't want to wear it, it's because she didn't want to match him. "There isn't another way," he says, as he stuffs the cloak in a knapsack. "If you will still help me we'd need to leave soon," he says a little impatiently, but it's not her he's rushing. If he can keep moving, keep occupying himself, he can keep his thoughts from delving to concepts he'd rather avoid for as long as possible.

Gevurah eyes the brusque manner with which Lanlan tries to hurry her out the door. Maybe she read him wrong when she came in here, and nothing can ever truly be as it was. Has he even looked at her the way he used to? She can’t be sure. “Fine,” she says as jilted as he had just done. “Meet me at the D’Artes stables in 20 minutes.” She leaves briskly to mirror the frigidity she believes she sees in him. At her home, she changes into black travel leathers, her greater enchanted piwafwi, and takes her whip of seven vipers off a wall rack. When Lanlan arrives, he’s shown straight to the stables by Izzerin himself, in the proto-flesh and freshly undead. Given the craftsmanship with which new Izzerin has been constructed, it’s a safe bet to assume only a master necromancer like Daath could have refashioned a new body for Izzerin whom Lanlan had mangled so badly Gevurah could not resurrect him. Izzerin glares at Lanlan but performs his duty with a stiff upper lip. “Master Daath is currently out on Charzu,” that’s the name of the lizard that Lanlan usually borrows, and that is also a lie. As far as Izzerin knows, Master Daath has never ridden a lizard. “You’ll have to ride Atak.” A runty little thing with a fungal issue in his scaley joints.

Lanlan throws some rations in a bag, sucks a glass wand up his sleeve, and grabs his xalious-wood staff. It doesn't take nearly twenty minutes. He pulls open the cover of a book that sits a top a large pile. He hasn't replaced his shelf yet, so they're stacked neatly on top of each other. This was one he wrote himself, and though his eyes dart over each word, each passage, each page, nothing written means anything to him. He leaves after turning pages like this for 15 minutes, and humming to himself. Izzerin meets him, and Lanlan walks past him, all but ignoring him. "Daath is on Charzu, is he?" Demands Lanlan after seeing the stabled lizards. Charzu is definitely among them, Lanlan is able to differentiate him by the funny cluster of chin spikes that make him look especially bearded. Lanlan gets the saddle ready himself and sits comfortably in the stirrups, and urges Charzu up to Izzerin with a slow gait. "Lie to me again. Next time I won't -let- you die." Then he rides out to meet Gevurah and start their journey. Hopefully by the time they're stuck together in the cabin of a boat, he can behave how he wants to.

Gevurah is oblivious to Izzerin and Lanlan’s tiff. Any curiosity she may have is kept under a tight, expressionless lip. She ushers her lizard forward and rides abreast of Lanlan wherever there’s enough space, and in front of him when there isn’t. On their ride to Cenril, she contemplates telling Lanlan about her meeting with Dyraxdiin, which was organized by Daath, and the new plan to rid the city of the dinosaurs, but she bites her tongue for churlish reasons she’d rather not examine (nor does she possess the self-awareness to do so). Lanlan would be right to pick up on some iciness on her part. To have wanted him so badly, and to feel that he perhaps did not want her as badly, has left her pride a little wounded and she’s too proud to beg. Instead she asks him questions about this mission in Rynvale. Are there any other animals with these glyphs? How did he learn about them? Why was he in the Fog Forest to begin with? ...With who?

Lanlan would merely scowl in silence at the thought of Daath bringing Izzerin back to life. Not only was he now particularly grotesque, but that was Lanlan's righteous retribution for being handled by a servant. Now it was undone, and so the tables were inevitably lopsided. But it wasn't obvious to Lanlan that his thoughts were coming off in his countenance and tone. Yet was she not upset with him? It seems strange that she would be this upset with him, personally, about going on a boat ride. Must be the boat ride though, because why else would she take an interest in this project? He'd answer all her questions to the best of his knowledge, as long as they didn't touch upon his original motivation. There very well could be more animals enchanted with runes like this one, the first he'd heard of them was in a request for Mage's Guild assistance. As it happens there were multiple missing people in the Fog Forest, so he took two of the apprentices to use as fodder, Karasu and Quintessa. "Actually," he begins with a matter-of-fact tone, "Didn't you get to meet Quintessa, recently?"

Gevurah vaguely recalls that Karasu is the feline that Lanlan used as a model for Gevurah’s disguise that last time they were in Cenril (they are now just passing the Western Gates). The green snake of envy coils in her chest. Then Lanlan gives her an opening. “Yes, Daath has taken an interest in her studies. He arranged for Dyraxdiin and I to meet to discuss my plan to rid the city of those dinosaurs, without risking any more drow lives. I shared it with them, Dyraxdiin and Daath. I’m sure Daath will tell you what the guild must do once they’ve figured out their end.” She doesn’t look at Lanlan. Under different circumstances she would have told him her plan, but alas, unfortunately, she’s seething beneath that collected composure.

Lanlan doesn't bother to disguise himself. It's daylight, so he has clothes covering every part of his skin, and a wide brimmed hat to shield his eyes. "It seems strange," Lanlan begins, still in the same neutral tone, "that no one from the Mage's guild or any of the ranking council members of Tris'toth thought I could be helpful. But good, I'm looking forward to talking to Daath." He then started cackling to himself, a gray wrap across his mouth doing little to muffle it. So far, nobody had linked the source of the embarrassing rumor to Lanlan, but he himself had heard it regurgitated back to him with numerous hilarious exaggerations.

Two Drow, One Boat (Cenril/Port Rynvale)

Gevurah had not yet heard Lanlan’s rumor about Daath. When Lanlan cackles, she shakes her head in a peeved motion and ushers her lizard into a faster gait to get to the harbor quickly. Once there, she finds a ferry with a cargo hold large enough to take the mounts. Cenril is multicultural enough that a pair of lizard-back drow only turn a few heads. She glances behind her at Lanlan to see if he’s kept up, and fancies him handsome in that wide-brimmed, dark hat. She looks away quickly in annoyance. Why did he even invite her to Rynvale when he’s so clearly moved on? When they book the ferry, she insists on the grandest suite. The lizards join a large stable of sea-bound horses in the cargo below deck. They flick their forked tongues over the long equine faces and dumb, long-lashed eyes. Once inside the suite, Gevurah parks herself on a cushioned bench along a window and stares out at the docks. The bustle of the Cenrili port fascinates her. How do so many ships fit in these small canals? How do those poor wretches keep all the cargo straight and know what goes where? She makes it a point not to look at Lanlan though his presence burns into the side of her face and makes her cheek a little flush.

Lanlan hangs up his hat and doffs a few other superfluous pieces now that they're indoors. He leans against the top of the window sill and looks out with her. A bland scene for him, having spent years on the surface. Early in his life he made himself unwelcome among the elves and stayed here, before ever braving the Underdark. "The amount of laws they use to keep everything in order here is exhausting," he says, "It's almost impossible to go an hour without breaking several." Surely that notion was shared by a large part of Cenril's population, but they broke laws wantonly knowing the consequences, Lanlan thought, while he did so out of necessity to live his life. He's soon bored of looking at the day to day life of Cenril though, and he joins her on the bench. Finally they were alone, and she could stop treating him like an embarrassing secret she had to keep. Without saying a word, he unravels the jaguar hide cloak and swings it around her back, holding each of its two large paws that wrap around each side of her neck. "Wow," is all he says after appraising her new look.

Gevurah lets Lanlan know she heard his interesting Cenrili law facts with a simple, “Mm.” He dresss her as a jaguar and normally she would be amused by it, tease him, fall into their banter, pretend to hate it while loving the attention. However, today she is incapable of that levity. Too much has happened between them in a very short span of time, and she’s been stewing on this ‘Karasu’ for the entirety of the ride. “Dressing me up as Karasu, are you?” she says pointedly.

Lanlan is practically oblivious, because of all the things about Karasu he finds detestable. He falls back dramatically on the bench, "Please, don't remind me." He covers his eyes as he recollects the profound annoyance that was getting her to fulfill a simple task. "We find this jaguar, it pounces on us and topples a tree on top of us before we subdue it," he says enthused. "And then, I have it submitting to me, its resigned to its fate. All she has to do is finish it!" He pauses, sitting back up to make sure she's following along. "What next?" Lanlan knows what Gevurah must be thinking, obviously Karasu executes it right? "She can't! She 'communicates' with it. So the other one, the human, cuts its head off with her sword. Fine, fine. So I tell her she has to skin it to redeem herself, and she runs away! Sits in the mud and cries in a pool of her own vomit." Obviously Lanlan didn't think there should be any form of sympathy between a person and a beast that tried to kill them, even if it was a sympathetic relation like a cat was to a half-feline person. "No I'm very happy to have -you- here with me," he says as he grabs the dead jaguar's paws again and tries to pull her close to him.

Gevurah feels stupid for the first time in… a decade? How could she have been jealous of Karasu at all, that sniveling worthless surfacer! Since when is she jealous of anyone? How can humans and elves stand feeling this way all the time in their pairings? The constant see-saw of euphoria and angst nauseates her. Finally Lanlan looks at her in that way that sets her skyrocketing to that euphoric peak, her stomach bottoming out and replaced with the heat of arousal as he pulls her in towards his chest. Her lips meet his feverishly to atone for her jealousy and make up for lost time (you know, a week; it’s that teenage feeling again). But she doesn’t push anything further than a kiss, still reticent to beg him for anything, even through her body. She needs to feel that he wants her as badly, if not more.

Lanlan wants her badly enough. As much as he entangled himself in distractions, she was always in the back of his mind, spurring him on. But now she was at the front. Right before his eyes were hers, her body right beneath his fingers. He kisses her, first on her lips and then pressing his into her neck, then collarbone, and lower as he helps her out of her clothes. Temporarily he'll forget he has any other reason for being on this boat than to love her.

Gevurah || It is in these moments of intense physical passion that Lanlan has the greatest opportunity to see how much he means to Gevurah. When they meet in this intimate and primal way, and the considerations of her station are gone, she reciprocates the looks of adoration that Lanlan gives her (almost) always, whether dressed or not, whether in bed or not (except for those times when jealousy and anger rule their better judgment). She cannot look at him as she does now outside of these intimate moments, and it isn’t because she doesn’t feel it then but simply because, well, she’s scared to. No drow matron should ever be so vulnerable as she is right now in his arms. As she lies against him post-climax, she reflects on how she had never wanted to simply hold and be held by anyone before him. She looks at his face. It’s an objectively average drow male face. Gevurah would argue with that fact, but the truth is that by drow standards he is neither handsome nor ugly. But to her, his features are incredibly alluring. There’s just something about him. She thinks to herself that she could look at him forever, lie with him forever. She suddenly understands why humans and elves who marry for love share the same bed for, if all goes well, the rest of their lives. Married drow don’t share a bed or marry for love. And yet, suddenly, she understands why the surfacers do. She wants to tell him this, to let him know the intensity of her feelings. Her lips part to tell him, their eyes locked, but she takes the coward’s road and simply kisses his chest and looks away. But she still feels compelled to vocalize her love, but what can she say without completely baring her soul to him? After a little rest, she starts their love making over again though not enough time has passed for him to be fully recharged. It doesn’t matter. She just wants the sensation and the intimacy. As they do it again and again, her compulsive need to tell him how she feels grows until she can’t bear it. She whispers against his lips, “I want to do this with you every day for the rest of our lives.” It’s the best she can do. She forgets how long a drow life is. The foghorn blares. They’ll be in Rynvale’s port in a half hour.

Lanlan lives for these moments now. Once he thought he'd always need this kind of intimacy, the kind where you give your spirit to another person and care if it is judged wanting. Back then it seemed like he could never have it, not truly, because no one could appreciate the real version of him. He's long since evolved, dismissed that need as a weakness to be conquered in himself. A curse thrust unto him by his parentage. And he conquered it! Saw the weakness in others and exploited it, laughing at them for being so foolish. When he looks at Gevurah, he knows she couldn't be afflicted by such a weakness, because drow simply don't have it. When he sees her looking at him, he feels the need to make himself more than adequate. They can be lost in these moments of passion, and his body can communicate with hers and reveal truths so complex and yet so simple, they can't be described in words. And when it's over, he's assured of her feelings, confident he's worthy. Invincible! But when he tries to tell her, he realizes speaking it aloud would curse it. He has no weaknesses as long as he says nothing. If he quantifies it, a word will shatter the illusion he's desperately concocted, dispersing it into dreams; air. And him along with it. Instead, they start over, so they can feel the ecstasy again, the confidence. And he won't have the breath to talk, or the mind to think. They start over again and he's invincible, yet fragile, hiding his weakness. Until she reveals hers. He chokes, "I-I do too," he creaks out. There's more he wants to say, and would've said! But he had to focus on holding her head against his chest so she wouldn't look up and see a drop of concentrated weakness in his eye.

Gevurah pretends not to hear the break in his voice or see that single gleam in his eye. She spares him the embarrassment of acknowledging his pain, but cannot spare herself the guilt for causing that pain the day she chose to marry Daath for political and arcane gain. She often forgets he was raised on the surface by elves, and that despite his best drow impulses he still associates marriage and love. She doesn’t. Daath is necessary. Marrying Lanlan would have been a waste of political energy and redundant. She could never say that. She kisses him one last time then rises. “We should get dressed.” She’s silent as she dresses, her gaze and thoughts elsewhere as she wrestles with the problem of Lanlan and Daath. Nothing yet has swayed her from her choice in Daath - it’s been working out better than expected. But will Lanlan ever come to accept this as their new normal? The ship docks and Gevurah steps out on the multicultural, but High Elf-run city. Her trademark scowl returns as she takes in the High Elf architecture in the distance. Their mounts are returned to them and she lets Lanlan take the lead. Once they ride beyond the city and out of reach of most spies, she tells him, finally, of her plan to rid the city of Razurath. It will be a curse, she explains, that targets only the Razurath and will kill them hopefully within an hour or two. She’s working on the lethality. What she can’t do alone is expand the radius large enough to cover the whole city. That’s where the Mage’s Guild comes in and she’ll need Lanlan working as an arcane battery, along with his guildmates, to increase the area of effect. Dyraxdiin is working on a mechanism to do so. “I’m still working on the curse too. I don’t want it to kill any drow, half drow, or non-drow slaves. We need the labor to rebuild the city. But Vakmatharas’s death curses are by their nature expansive to include as many victims as possible. It’s easier to make a single exception to the curse - for example kill no drow - then it is to make the curse only affect a single race. Quintessa is capturing Razurath subjects for me to experiment on.”

Lanlan brushes his eye with one of his eyebrows before he thinks Gevurah could see it. "Right," he says, dressing with his back to her so he can hide his face completely. Why does he feel so frightened of letting her know how happy he is? It's not like he can hide it from himself. Would it be any less bone-shattering if she doesn't know how from how high he fell? Maybe because he knows it's wrong. He shouldn't be this happy yet, he has too much work to do. He needs her to be only his, doesn't he, and she won't be unless he gathers more power. Lanlan barely acknowledges the High Elf architecture, though truth be told he likes their style, it's the people he can't stand. Some of the ugliest and stupidest people he'd ever known were from Rynvale. Lanlan listens intently to the plan without interrupting. He might be bitter about being excluded from it, but even that wasn't as important as ousting their occupiers. "Then I'll have to smuggle them in," he says, referring to his Mage's guild members, "I don't think anyone else could do it. And no one else could hide them as effectively. But it is...a good plan." He concedes that willingly, being regretful only of the fact that he probably won't be able to see her work, and he -loved- watching her work. It was when his attraction to her originally manifested; he remembers it well, still thinks about it. The day she killed Nymh. Back then she was unattainable. He shakes his head to dismiss the day-dream, as they approach the Fog Forest. They were here for a reason, but somehow he forgot. He pulls on his jaguar headdress, speckled with black glyphs, and leads her to where he found the jaguar earlier. Instantly they will notice a change. Whoever wears the mottled hide of the jaguar does become infinitely more concealed in the fog, and as it swirls Lanlan seems to drift in and out of existence.

Glyphs in the Mist (Fog Forest)

Gevurah agrees when Lanlan says only he could smuggle in the Mage’s Guild members effectively. Grudgingly she puts on her jaguar pelt in the hopes that it will give her clues to solve this arcane mystery. When she and Lanlan starts to disappear, then reappear, then disappear, she brings her lizard to a halt and dismounts. From her bottomless satchel, she pulls out a thin Cypress tree branch, smoothes the branch over the jaguar pelt back and forth in a wide arc, and whispers a quick incantation. “Let’s find the source of this strange power…” she says. She holds the branch at its thickest end and holds the branch away from her body, parallel to the floor. Nothing. She then turns the branch perpendicular to the floor, thin point down, and speaks a shorter version of the incantation. The tip bends unnaturally, without snapping, to the north west as if the branch were suddenly made of rubber. “That way,” she says. “Not far.” Following the branch’s lead, she walks steadily into the heart of the fog forest until she is permanently invisible. “Lanlan?” she asks to find him. She peers out to see if the jaguar cloak is giving her any special arcane sight. She’s a little out of her element, but her basic understanding of how glyphs should work guides a series of educated guesses.

Lanlan dismounts with her when the lizard stops. Soon there's nothing he can see of her, and the only clue to where she's going appear in the form of footprints that appear when she depresses the wet dirt beneath her. Last time he was here, he had to follow his notes and doodles denoting landmarks. The fog obscured basic people's vision of course, but the swirling mist had a nauseating effect on drow infravision as well, as it seemed to distract with its natural coolness. Having Gevurah here was actually a much greater boon than he anticipated. Eventually she leads him to the heart of the fog forest, and their invisibility would be complete and apparently permanent, as it was with the jaguar. "This is where the jaguar found us originally," he whispers, a habit whenever he turns invisible, "It must be something about this tree, or this mist." When they stand closer to the strange, out of place tree and look away from it, they can begin to see how the mist swirls in seemingly deliberate patterns. "I recognize these patterns," he says with trepidation. Lanlan couldn't piece it together, but he began to feel like his agency was diminishing. "Can you see them?" A thought nagged at him, that he wasn't here because he wanted to be here, but because he was supposed to be. A belligerent thought occurred to him, that if someone other than him wanted him here, he should leave. Or maybe he was afraid.

Gevurah shakes her head despite the fact Lanlan cannot see her. Belatedly she says, “No, I can’t see-wait, yes. Maybe?” Her eyes aren’t as accustomed as Lanlan’s to finding glyph patterns in mist or anywhere else. She illuminates herself in faerie fire to make it easier for Lanlan to see her silhouette. “Where have you seen these patterns before?” She steps closer to the tree and her faerie-fire lined dowsing rod snaps from the sheer power emanating from that tree. The rod is not supposed to break. “There’s a rift here. My dowsing branch broke, so there is a tear in… magic? The plane? I’m not sure, but something is torn right here where this tree is.” She extends a hand towards the tree bark and whispers a fortifying spell to protect herself (hopefully) from unwanted teleportations, astral projections, plane hopping, plane walking, random spell casting, and other rift-related anomalies. She touches the tree bark and waits for Vakmatharas to illuminate her as to this tree’s true nature (and hopefully she isn’t thrown for some cosmic-arcano loop). This is the equivalent of finding a corndog on the floor at the fair, picking it up, and figuring out whether or not it’s safe to eat by eating it. She’s fearless, and Lanlan can see it all through her glowing silhouette.

Lanlan || When Gevurah touches the tree and waits for a divination from Vakmatharas, she'd be immersed in magical energy behind its bark coursing through its trunk, up to its branches, into the leaves, before slowly dissipating into the air around the tree. But when she followed the tracks underground, she'd find the trunk goes much deeper than any tree should. She could follow the trail for hours, days even, and they might not ever end, but it was very stimulating. Pleasurable. As short as the journey from one plane to another might seem, the distance the magical leylines seemed to cover to make it appear so seemed infinite. Overcome with curiosity and refusing to bow out when she was being so bold, Lanlan takes initiative. He pulls his Xalious-wood staff from a loop on his back and a glass wand appears in his other hand from his sleeve. "Then we should see what they've stashed here," he says, though he's only beginning to suspect who 'they' might be. He charges each of the runes created by the deliberately swirling mist with raw magical energy, tracing them in a purple burning plasma. He follows one to the next, until there's a story written in a ring around the tree. Behind him, the tree creaks and groans. If Gevurah's still following the trails in the tree, she'd find her consciousness overcome with a sense that she was travelling very, very fast. Whatever the tree was hiding in another existence, was rapidly coming to this one. Soft tremors grew at their feet, and vibrated against the tree, jiggling the mud on the ground. The rumbling eventually grew fiercer, and roots were forced out of the ground from whatever was bursting to life under them. Lanlan would start backing up, terrified the tree might topple on them, or that it was some kind of monster. He almost sprints away in terror, before returning to grab Gevurah by the hand if she might still be enraptured by the sensations. In another moment, small cottage burst from the earth, casting mud and small rocks in every direction. Was it new? The logs of this cabin were made of trees they'd never seen before. Or was it old, using pieces of wood from flora that's long since died out? The roots from the tree held it tight, but not in a way that might crush it, and the tree seemed to sprout directly from the roof of the house.

Gevurah was already, though a bit belatedly, running from the rumbling tree when Lanlan takes her hand. She holds onto him, even once they’re safe, to not lose him in the mist. Gevurah quickly releases a breath she didn’t realize she was holding as she takes in the fact of this ancient, interplanal cottage. “Did you see the leylines?” she asks. “They go on forever, under the earth and along the roots and beyond.” She looks over at Lanlan but sees nothing. “Let me see you.” She needs to read his expression to see if he’s game to go inside. “It would be a waste to come all this way and not see what’s inside.” What she doesn’t say, because she doesn’t have to, because she knows Lanlan knows, is that there’s a real chance they will be stuck on the other side of that door, that some portals only move in one direction, that some hidden homes reveal themselves only to be traps. And yet, she can’t turn back now. What is this?

Lanlan keeps her hand in his while he stares warily. This couldn't be a coincidence. He's puzzling within himself to discern what was the first step that led him to this cabin's door. He holds her hand in his and takes his cowl off with his other. "Uh. Uhh, no. I saw runes hidden within the mist, like a question that I just recently learned the answer to." Whatever this might be, he knew it wouldn't be a trap, not in the way she was thinking. If someone wanted him dead they wouldn't send him on a convoluted scavenger hunt, they'd simply pay someone a lot of money, or die trying to do it themselves. Or if they were as smart and powerful as whoever orchestrated this, they'd be upfront about his murder. Lanlan reaches out with his staff and knocks on the door a few times. No response. He opens the door, keeping Gevurah's hand in his if he can. "Someone's playing games with me, Gevurah," he said belligerently, before looking back at her with measured conviction. Then he slides the staff back in its holster and turns the knob. At this point he's not even surprised to find it isn't locked, and it slides open easily as if it was brand new. They'd go inside, and find an ordinary, yet dusty home. It had cupboards, a table, a chair, and a shimmering black skeleton huddled in a far corner, head between its knees. Just in front of it was a pile of ash, easily dispersed by the breeze that enters when they open the door. "This, doesn't...mean anything to me?" He looks at Gevurah to see what she might make of it before again using his Xalious wood staff as danger-o-meter. He prods the sad skeleton in the cranium. Maybe it was the motion, or the latent magic in the wood, but the skeleton lurched, and the shiny black coating that covered it pooled into a thick sticky protrusion on the skull, and latched onto Lanlan's staff. Lanlan pulled hard to wrestle it free. The blob pulled harder, harder than Lanlan or Gevurah could resist, and caught him in a sticky embrace. Lanlan panicked, through his staff away, tried to tear gobs of the goo away from his skin while it melded into the pores of his skin. Every piece he tore from his flesh merely melted into him, while he struggled, blinded by the living ink on his face he staggers back and falls over a chair and into a table and seems to sleep. The skeleton, having nothing else to do, fades into dust.

Gevurah :: “What do you mean? Who do you think is playing games with you?” Gevurah follows him inside at a cautious distance. As soon as they enter, her back stiffens and her eyes widen and dilate as she tries to pinpoint whatever is causing her skin to goosebum. “Lanlan,” she whispers hurriedly, “There’s something else in here.” Her gaze sweeps past the skeleton, and so it is clear she isn’t referring to that. “It’s not…I don’t know what, but something is here.” She reaches into her satchel for her thumb-worn totem of Vakmatharas. She whispers a quick incantation to shield herself from this mysterious third presence. That’s when Lanlan prods the skeleton and the ‘something’ leaps to life in the form of an ooze. “No!” Gevurah gasps. The evil emanating from the goo strikes Gevurah’s core like a gong tolling the dead. She quickly works her fingers in an arcane pattern and utters a command word to blast the goo off Lanlan’s face by wracking it with psychosis so powerful it should hurt its mind. The goo doesn’t even flinch, evidently immune. “Lanlan!” She blasts a small but potent fireball right the lump of goo still furthest from Lanlan’s nose, but to her dismay the ooze simply shimmers and absorbs her arcane pyromantic power. Screw it, she leaps forward and tries to pry the thing off Lanlan’s face with her bare hands. It’s a risk, but she trusts her god to protect her. The ooze slips past her fingers as if she were nothing more forceful than a breeze. It melts into Lanlan’s flesh and she’s powerless to stop it. Her lover convulses then goes slump. That mysterious presence disappears and Gevurah can detect no more evil energy (aside from her own). Lanlan, Lanlan, she repeats his name as she shakes his shoulders. She whispers yet another invocation to wake his mind, breathe life into him, and bring him back to her. As she works to wake him, she turns him over on the table so he is facing the ceiling and she can see his face. With every second that Lanlan doesn’t wake, she grows increasingly hysterical. Her expression twists into a strange mixture of fear and grief, and her repetition of his name begins to choke out in something kin to a cry - though not quite a cry. She hasn’t yet turned to panic. She remains firm in her ability to overcome this and get him out in one piece. If he would only just wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

Lanlan fights desperately in his dreams, a place he should inevitably have the advantage. Not just because they were his dreams, either, all dreams were his domain. The world people inhabit when they sleep is the origin of his magic, he could manipulate it effortlessly. Coax it from there to here, define its entire being on a whim, dismiss it when he was done. But outside, it was just pictures and sounds. In dreams his fire burned, earth shook, wind carried, and water drowned. Whatever monster he imagined was as powerful as he wanted it to be, but he was defenseless against this infinite abyss of ink that stretched over all he saw. It engulfed his flames hungrily, absorbed torrents of pressurized water, glided over fissures, and weathered tornadoes without flinching. So Lanlan fled into a memory. Nothing could be altered. This one was frightening enough already. "If you can't keep your hair from tangling," the elf woman said to a seated young gray elf with his eyes buried in his hands, "you can't keep your hair at all!" After she cut a mangled knot off young Lanlan's head, he looked up at her. The poisonous elven visage he expected was replaced by a black empty void purging out of an elegant noble's dress. The shock knocked him out of the chair, where he fell into a hole. Blackness surrounded him, and he fell, and fell and fell. In the cabin, Lanlan opens his eyes. "Yes, Gevurah?" He merely blinks at her, and waits patiently for her to give him the room to stand. Then, "We're done here. I have all I need to activate the pelts' enchantment." He looks around the cabin briefly, before moving deliberately to one of the cupboards. Opens it reaches his hand in, closes it. "Unless there's something you needed to do?"

Gevurah :: The hairs on the back of Gevurah’s neck rise when Lanlan addresses her the way he does. This isn’t Lanlan. She knows the way her lover looks at her and speaks to her, even when he’s all business. Her face does little to betray her knowledge that something has changed. Whatever this is, she needs to lure it back to her temple where she is strongest and can battle with whatever has a hold of Lanlan. As Lanlan reaches into the cupboard, a horrifying thought occurs to her. What if this is Lanlan in another of his long con pranks? What if he’s planning something without telling her, some comeuppance for her betrayal of him by marrying Daath? Could all of this be an act? If anyone has the ability to pull of a stunt this spectacular, it’s Lanlan. Spectacle is his brand. She shoves the thought to the back of her mind. No. She felt the ooze before she saw it; it’s real, not an illusion. This can’t be an act - can it? “What did you take from the cupboard?” she asks as she walks towards the door to block Lanlan’s escape. “Actually, there is something I need to do. Can you gather the ash from the skeleton? I want to appraise it in my temple and see if Vakmatharas can provide any clarity on what happened here. It might help you piece all of this together.” A lie. She has little interest in the skeleton, but she needs to get Lanlan to her temple.

Lanlan continues walking towards her with no sense of malice or urgency. "If you need to collect the ash I'd recommend haste as we can't possibly know for how long this cottage will remain in this realm," he says nonchalantly. He doesn't budge, except for his hand to tremble. Beneath his complexion there's a subtle shifting of tones where moving rows of faded symbols arrange themselves. They settle in place as he stares at her and fade completely. Then the trembling stops. Abruptly there's a shift in his demeanor, "No you're right! You could probably divine something." The glass wand flies from his sleeve to his fingers and he uses it to funnel a small amount of bone-dust in a vial and a tiny pile of ashes in another. "But really, we should leave. I have a feeling this place is going to collapse." So he reaches out for her hand to drag her out of the cottage before that could be possible, apparently forgetting to mention anything about the small object he found in the cupboard.

Gevurah stiffens when Lanlan’s face is obscured by the eerie shifting of runes that come and go like wraiths. Then he suddenly sounds more like himself. She follows him out of the cottage and studies him as they part the mist like curtains and reunite with their lizards. As they walk, she peppers him with questions. “What did you grab in the cupboard?” “How are you feeling? Does anything hurt?” “Did you get what you came for?” “What’s next?” As he replies she whispers a quick spell to scan him and see if anything turns up. The reading is fuzzy. There could be something, or this enchanted fog could be muddying the signals she’s receiving. There’s a more powerful version of this spell that she can do in her temple. She must get him there.

Lanlan is extremely nonchalant about all this, answering her questions easily. "I think I bumped my head. I know how to fix the pelts so they stay invisible. I have to return to the Robelous Wood." Then when she ask him about what he grabbed from the cupboard he seems a little confused. "Did I...grab something?" He taps his pockets until he feels the impression of a small object, and he pulls it out. It's a fancy looking stone cup. "It's a cup," he says, being illuminated by the discovery, "but it is quite a good cup, and I've never seen stonework like this before." He turns it over and over in his hands, unable to reconcile its existence within his memory, yet here it is. He didn't know what it was going to be until he pulled it out of his pocket. A cup seemed unusual, but not alarming. "I think I'll have my masons attempt to replicate it," he says, babbling without meaning to. The words seem foreign, and it seems like something might be wrong, but he has absolutely no anxiety about it whatsoever. He holds it out so she can see it, but would guard it jealously if she would try to take it from him. Almost everything about him should appear normal, if nothing in the past weeks had occurred. His affections were limited to ones shared among friends (on the surface), and he especially wouldn't disrobe, complaining of the cold, or of being tired, or any other excuse.

Gevurah ‘s brows knit in befuddlement. “The Robelous Woods? Where is that?” Then Lanlan pulls an old, ordinary stone cup from his pocket and acts like it’s a man-made wonder of the world. “Lanlan, if this is another one of your jokes, it’s not funny. Stop it.” She stares at him long and hard. “Stop it. I don’t like this.”

Lanlan chuckles a little bit as if Gevurah's silly for asking. "The Robelous Wood? That's just- that's the old name for Sage forest. Nobody calls it that anymore I don't know why I did." Nobody has called it that for thousands of years, but that doesn't seem like such a long time ago to Lanlan. As the curse infiltrates and finds a comfortable spot in his soul, Lanlan seems to become more and more unaware that anything at all is happening. "I promise I'm not joking, First Daughter," he says, using a title he hasn't used in some time, "I wouldn't be so brazen."

Gevurah knows that Lanlan absolutely would be so brazen. It’s impossible to know where his games end. And yet she did see the ooze jump at his face. Right? That couldn’t have been an illusion? Right? It could have been. But would he do that to her? No. ...Maybe. Maybe. The best way to solve this is to play along. Act as if this is fine. If it’s a curse, she’ll shepherd him to her temple. If he is possessed or cursed, it would be risky to go routing around his mind, body and soul without the proper tools. And if it’s not a curse and Lanlan is pranking her, she’ll deny him the satisfaction of seeing her riled. “Take the lead to Port Rynvale,”she says as she ushers her lizard into a trot behind Lanlan to keep an eye on him. During the ride she makes no small talk. Instead her focus is on every tiny gesture, look, word, sigh that Lanlan does. She waits for him to slip, to break this dumb act and return to himself. Or, if he doesn’t, she seeks proof of his possession. Back in the port, they catch a ferry back and Gevurah books a similar suite. Inside, she sits stiffly on the bench by the window, as distant and disturbed as the last time she sat on a bench like this, but this time for wholly different reasons.

Lanlan has no qualms leading, especially with their lizard mounts. On foot it was always a problem not being able to see the ground you walked on, never knowing when you might trip over a fallen branch or a breaching root. So he had no problem! But he was also very carefree, happy even. He tipped the worker who led their lizards to their homes under the boat! "So I'll get off in, um, that place. That city. Cenril! And then I'll leave you for the Robelous wood," he says while she broods. "My business there, it isn't -urgent-. But it is tedious and I'd rather get it over with." Though he sincerely did want to part ways, the way he tries to manipulate her is so flagrant, like his cunning was waning, or he simply couldn't be bothered to put in the effort. It's almost as if he's talking to himself, only casually aware of her, for the most part. "You seem bothered! I'm fine! Whatever happened in the cabin was just-" As he reminds himself of it, his hand begins to tremble again and he freezes. His face is technically without color already, but whatever normally flushed it drains away. The runes under his skin appear momentarily again. "-nothing," he finishes at last. "Actually I am tired," he says as he turns away from her and lays down on their bed.

A Failed Exorcism (Grand Temple to Vakmatharas/Magthere whol onhir d'Aphyon)

Gevurah commits to her plan to play along until Lanlan is in the Temple of Vakmatharas. Ideally he agrees to go there of his own accord. If not, taking him by force is always an option, but suboptimal. Her plan assumes that he is possessed. Because if he isn’t possessed, if this is a ruse… then, she wonders, why? Is this part of a grand scheme to usurp D’Artes in retribution for her marrying Daath? She watches Lanlan pace the suite in his new, unusual manner, and knows he is capable of anything. He betrayed Laezila. Why does Gevurah think she’s special? Because they’ve been intimate? Was that also a part of a long con to lower her defenses and gain her trust, so that he could betray her more easily? She shudders violently at the thought, her heart preemptively breaking. He couldn’t have faked all that affection, or could he? He’s from the surface. She always forgets. Lanlan says he is tired and lies down. Yes, he’s tired, yes, good. Good, that must mean this is a curse, right? Gods have mercy on her, because she won’t know the truth until she gets to her temple and every excruciating minute that she doesn’t have an answer she does herself harm by thinking herself in circles. She walks over to the bed and stands bedside it, staring down at what she hopes is the body of her lover under possession. A curse would be better than the alternative. A curse she can deal with, dispel, do battle with. A treacherous lover would be a new foe for her. She doesn’t know how to fight that. She doesn’t even know how to define that. Can you say a lover betrayed you if they had been faking their love all along? “Lanlan, listen to me. If traveling to the woods is not urgent, then come home first. You injured yourself. I can make you better. I have what I need in my temple. I just want to make sure you’re alright.”

Lanlan closes his eyes while he tries to fight for clarity of thought. Through the fog of his mind, he continuously uncovers an inkling. Something happened, something isn't right. But every time he commits to that train of thought it, it vanishes, and he gets more and more tired. "Don't worry about me," he says to her and him, "I must be fine." Then he has to struggle to remember that something is wrong...might be wrong...could be wrong... He takes a deep breath and holds it while she talks, trying hard to understand the words. "I think that's a good idea. I hit my head," he tells himself, "and I should go home first, because I should be strong enough to disenchant the thalion telmar." Apparently having convinced himself, his breathing steadies and his hand stops trembling. The runes fade, and he dozes. Not quite awake, but not quite asleep, lingering in the strange twilight state in between while the boat rocks.

Gevurah :: A bolt of intuition strikes Gevurah and she instinctually knows not to ask about the thalion telmar, whatever that may be. She intuits, or perhaps Vakmatharas himself planted this insight in her mind, that if Lanlan is possessed, the entity inside him will be protective of this thalion telmar. She doesn’t disturb his strange trance-like rest. In Cenril, she remains placid in hopes of not spooking the-entity-masquerading-as-Lanlan. They ride to Trist’oth quickly. Again Gevurah asks Lanlan to take the lead. Once they’re in the dark elf city, Gevurah leads him past the Razurath checkpoint to the Grand Temple of Vakmatharas, past the bloodied altar, past the throngs of drow speaking in tongues, to a private shrine reserved for the highest ranking priests. Along the way she reassures Lanlan that everything is normal. He hurt his head. He needs help. She will help him. Inside the shrine, she places a large bronze bowl between two mats on the floor and lines the bowl with broken glass. “Sit,” she says as sits on one mat across from Lanlan. “Give me your hand. I need a sample of blood.” Her hand holds an ornate obsidian athame. If he complies, she slices a shallow cut into his palm, then holds a prism made of quartz beneath his bleeding hand. Her lips recite an incantation with the surety a bard recites the dark elf battle hymn. When Lanlan’s blood drips onto the quartz prism, it shines celestial light onto the glass which shimmers in multicolor patterns that only a trained High Priestess like Gevurah can read. A long, slow sigh of relief slips past her lips. He’s possessed. If her reading is correct. A paranoid thought occurs in the back of her mind, a blip of doubt: Could Lanlan have learned what priestess’s look for with this spell, and is he now masking her bowl with an illusion? Surely not. But could he, if he wanted to? She forces the thought out of her mind. He is possessed. The bowl says so. Her God would not lie to her, even if Lanlan would. No, no, he is possessed. He must be. “I can help you, Lanlan,” she says in the steady voice she’s been using from the moment he became possessed. Here’s the tricky part of an exorcism: the entity never wants to be exorcised. Gevurah whips out her hand at a preternatural speed and sends a ball of dark force against Lanlan’s chest. If the full blow lands, he’ll be blasted off his ass, against the wall, and paralyzed, pinned against the granite with his feet a few inches off the ground. If he escapes, she’ll try again with her second hand, which is already posed for the one-two capture.

Lanlan goes along with everything she says, sometimes not even acknowledging her with an answer, he's simply too mentally drained to bother. Everything seems to make sense so far, whatever she says sounds good. The scenery passes him by unnoticed, and he guides the lizard almost entirely out of habit, essentially counting on Gevurah to make sure whatever path he takes is a safe one. Even when they get to the temple, he does as he's told. "What is this place?" He says as he drags his feet past the undead elves. Even if he was never here, it should be obvious. But he keeps moving forward, lazily climbing the steps until finally he's allowed to rest again on the mat opposite hers. "My blood?" He asks her with a tiny spark of consciousness in his eyes, "Why do you need that?" But before she can even answer he dismisses the question, he adds, "Okay but only take a little...haha..." whatever part of him cared was buried, and he made the mildest attempt at a joke. However, the act of her performing her magic does seem to stir him, and he becomes more alert. His eyes narrow on her and he takes a sudden concern in her expressions. When her ritual is complete he notices her sigh of relief. "I told you it wasn't serious," he says, sternly, maybe even angrily. But he doesn't relax, he knows she's lying, and he knows what she's going to have to do. And suddenly, he can't let her. He anticipates her move and catches her wrist in his hand, altering the course of her magic energy so it misses him by inches and splashes off the cavernous walls behind him. "I knew you would betray me," he says, teeth clenched. "You always thought I'd come for you." He isn't in time to deflect the second blast, so instead he mitigates the damage to his body by clasping her hand in his and attempting to weather it there. The force of it sends ripples through his bones, muscles, skin, and shreds his sleeve. His arm falls slack, instantly covered in grotesque bruises and blood like it weeped from his pores. But even through the blood, the bold runes show themselves. As if just noticing them, he glances to either wall on Gevurah's sides. Double rings form on each, the rings are filled in with bright green glyphs, and in an instant two snaking pillars of stone erupt from the walls and rush toward Gevurah to clap her into a bloody mess of meat. Whether they crush or or not, the dust cloud created by the shattering stone is enough of a distraction for Lanlan to shroud himself in magical invisibility. He's well versed enough to disguise his heat signature from her infravision as well, but he can use his to find her if she's survived.

Gevurah leaps into the air and levitates as the runes appear on either side of her. The pillars just barely miss her legs. Her shoulders bend down to the side forming a side-long u-shape as her nails extend into sharp black claws. Her gaze never leaves Lanlan as she scrapes the stone from Lanlan’s own pillars, whispers a quick spell, then, still hovering in midair, blows the rock dust that is scraped beneath her claws at Lanlan’s last known location before he went invisible. The dust expands into a floor-to-ceiling, square sand storm that coats everything in a thin layer of sticky, pulverized rock, thereby making Lanlan visible to her again, unless he manages to escape the dusty screen. Either way, she follows that up with a quick power word of Vakmatharas, a divine spell that comes as second nature to Priestesses of Death. Her left hand twists into an unnatural sigil as she speaks the power word in Ancient Drow, and shoots a black cone of sickness in the direction Lanlan was when he disappeared (or his dust-laden body if she can see it). Anything caught within the cone will quickly grow weak. Less powerful/non-magical beings would collapse instantly, Lanlan would have some resistance, but it’s anyone’s guess as to what this new entity is capable of.

Lanlan doesn't bother reaching over his shoulder to arm himself with his Xalious wood staff, it does so apparently of its own accord. It floats silently out of its loop and hovers inches off the ground waiting for its purpose. He can see the dust clinging to his clothes and so knows he's become visible. His staff vibrates with energy, and he grabs it with his good hand. The stored energy releases and the staff springs up dragging Lanlan with it. They dart through the air taking evasive maneuvers against Gevurah's cone of sickness, until Lanlan circles back down. He casts his own spell, and an enormous plume of gray smoke billows out under her, eventually manifesting a grotesque caricature of Lanlan's face and hands. It snares her in its fingers and bellows. "You shouldn't have done this! I would've followed you anywhere!" Lanlan remains below at the source of the illusion, and prepares another circle of runes. A gout of flames burst out from within the smoke to scorch her while she tangles with the illusion of Lanlan.

Gevurah reaches into her bottomless satchel as Lanlan evades her cone. She fishes out a lock of spider silk, but she’s mid-incantation when Lanlan’s illusion grabs her leg. Although she knows the nature of Lanlan’s illusions, and she knows that everything Lanlan is saying is the product of a possessive entity rooting around in his mind for manipulative things to say, she can’t fully disbelieve the illusion. The illusion flickers in and out of corporeal form. It grabs her by the thigh, then flickers out of existence as she tries to disbelieve it. She slips through a little as the illusion fails, but her mind is distracted with the problem of how to subdue Lanlan without killing him! This distraction allows the illusion to return and grab her again by the knee. The priestess wills a stillness of her mind to fully disbelieve the spell again, and yes it fades again, but yet again her mind leaps to the problem of how to restrain but not kill. The hand returns, grabs her by the calf. This is why love is a weakness. The drow are right about that. She’s so distracted trying to save Lanlan that she can’t focus on the battle fully. Her distress for his sake is so total that she completely fails to repel the burst of flame. The flames scorch through her enchanted leathers and burn into her ebon flesh, causing it to boil, burst, and bleed along the full length of her thigh. She screams in agony. The pain so utterly racks her brain that she fails to disbelieve the illusion yet again and is now completely ensnared in Lanlan’s hands. Although it may look like Gevurah is at a disadvantage, they are in a Temple of Vakmatharas. She is the spider and this is her web. She knows exactly what she needs to do, and can do, in this very temple, to fully extinguish Lanlan’s life, permanently, irrevocably, in an offering to her god, but she can’t bring herself to do it. She could end this and save herself with no more injury, but her heart won’t let her do it. She throws up a protective magical sphere, translucent gray, to buy her time. The flames lick the bubble and it’s only a matter of time before it bursts. She lets loose a primal, furious, frustrated roar. She’s angry at herself for falling in love, angry at Lanlan for being possessed, angry at this entity for possessing him, and angry that she’s badly hurt. She takes the same spider silk she’s been holding this whole time and lashes it up to the roof. It sticks and yanks her upwards just as she calms her mind and expels the illusion from her mind’s eyes. With it gone, she leaps out of the flames reach on a spider silk cord. She clings to the ceiling upside down on all fours and looks down at Lanlan’s dust-laden form. She has to keep trying. She pushes off the ceiling into a shadow to her left as she whispers yet another spell, then disappears entirely from view and blinks back into a shadow to Lanlan’s right, just behind him. She wields a blunt totem of Vakmatharas in her hand, grabbed off the wall, and tries to jab it into Lanlan’s temple. If she makes contact, he’ll fall into a coma. If she misses, well dip this was her hail mary and she’s in melee range now.

Lanlan utilizes the cover of his illusion coupled with the flames to disguise himself yet again. He puts on his enchanted cowl, and it fabricates an entire robe, the gray fabric loosely fitting around him, covering all his extremities, and hiding his face in a shadow. Then he drapes a copy of the gray billowy mass he's become over his staff, and the two part ways. The real Lanlan presses himself against the wall, and his robe's enchantment easily camouflages him as just another surface. The staff, being used as a stunt double, stands in place, apparently anticipating Gevurah's movements and waiting to counter, or finish her off. When Gevurah disappears, she doesn't manifest again behind Lanlan. It isn't Lanlan who she brutally clubs over the head. But when the copy falls into a coma, it triggers another illusion. Lanlan wraps Gevurah in an enclosure of segmented mirrors, each one dominated by his visage and the xalious-wood staff floating before it and the version of her standing in the middle, reflected over and over. One after another, they draw the glass wand in his sleeve and funnel energy through the crook of the staff, and magical burning spikes like a bolt from a crossbow appear. They wait, tracking her movements and letting her see them for what they are. Then they fly. She would see each one in front of her plunge into her skin, and each one behind her pass erupt out of her torso, arms, and legs, taking her blood with them and splattering it against the mirrors, before turning around to pass through a second time. Lanlan, the real Lanlan, urged his staff to roll over to him and he walks unseen past the nightmare he created, staff in tow. He's content to merely exit at first, leaving her to succumb to the illusion of seeing herself die from a dozen angles. But he knows how strong she is. Before he goes, he turns back, bends his staff out, and takes fine control over a piece of rubble the size of a man's torso. With a flick of his wrist, it dives through the back of her legs, knocking her on her back. Then while she's prone, he swoops it back up and slowly presses it against her chest. Lanlan resumes his exit. The rock continues its course with the floor, cracking ribs and anything else she put in front of it if she wanted to save herself. Once Lanlan's finally exited the temple, the magic ends, and Lanlan can't know what ultimately became of his former lover.

Gevurah :: The moment the mirrors appear, Gevurah begins to calm her mind to truly disbelieve, confidently, without fear. Disbelieving an illusion isn’t as simple as thinking ‘it isn’t there.’ It requires a deeply spiritual calm that a petulant, frightened insistence of ‘It’s not real!’ won’t accomplish. Countless hours of meditation help her get there quickly, but not quick enough. She takes a bolt clean through the shoulder before she dispels the illusion from her mind’s eye. The bolt stabs above her breast and shatters her shoulder blade on its exit. She’s so focused on the first illusion that the rock pegs her hard in the knee and she’s knocked back. Her head slams on the stone ground and a fresh wound cracks open and gushes blood like juice from a gourd. It takes her a couple seconds, precious seconds, to realize that this is likely an illusion too. The pebble has already cracked through two ribs and punctured a lung before she dispels it. That feat is a testament to her meditative control and ability to calm her mind under such blinding pain. She gasps and wheezes as she coughs up blood and rolls onto her side. She doesn’t bother to look for Lanlan. It is evident this ends one of two ways: she dies or he dies. She won’t allow the first, and she can’t bear the second. She pulls her piwafwi closer to her body then crawls with her one good arm - dragging her burnt thigh on the floor as she oozes blood from her head, her mouth, her shoulder, her thigh - to a shadow, and blinks out of the room.