RP:Grimoire on the Loose
Background
This is part of the arc: The Mystery of the Wandering Grimoire
In an incident possibly related to a recent [report] from the Dark Lands, necromancer Joliette Thorne and the skeletal necromantic dragon Maghu find themselves in a most peculiar introduction...
Tomb of Tiervolyn
Within this ancient dusty room you find many coffins that seem to be burnt with the exception of one. A coffin made of strange black stone hangs from massive chains. Upon the coffin is a red glowing gem, crafted perfectly into the surface. The artifact radiates a cold aura which swirls like steam from the livings breath on an icy day. At the foot of the coffin is an inscription which reads Here Lays Tiervolyn, Dark Ancient and Archmage of Vailkrin, and Slayer of Life, Even in Death Shall He Posses Power. As you examine the strange artifact, you have an urge to reach out and touch the beautiful gem, but at the last moment, you pull your hand back, feeling cold and now uncomfortable, you think it best not to play with such things. Deep within your mind you can hear a faint whisper, Tiervolyn has already found a soul..... The strange whisper echoes away and is gone. Upon further inspection, you can see writing on the tomb. Over the years, much of the writing has been faded away, but some still remains. It tells the story of Tiervolyn, his race was unknown by the people, and he was only described as a winged human, who towered in size over most men. He was no avian, nor was he an angel. You now also notice a sickening cold aura coming from the dark shadows, the feeling is of that of a nightmare, if it could physically touch a soul.
Jolie often visited the tomb of Tiervolyn, that mysterious and long-dead arch-mage of Vailkrin, whose gloomy sepulchre had become something of a sanctuary for the necromancer over the past few, turbulent months. It was peaceful down here, even though the shadows would idly pluck at her mind and slide inky chills down her spine when she least expected it, she was somehow at home here in the silent, sentient darkness in a way she was not anywhere else in this world.
Jolie said to Tiervolyn’s tomb, “I bet you weren’t so worried about everything, before you perished. I bet you were brave, all of the time.” She sighed, tracing her finger over an inscription half-obscured by lichen. “Not that I’m afraid –all- of the time, of course. But I –have- been a bit worried about…” Something fluttered in the shadows, loudly enough to disturb her train of mind and she wheeled about to find a book hovering mid-air, the tome’s pages flipping madly between its skin-bound covers.
“Hello…” she said, staring at it. “… what are you doing out of your shelf?” Of course Jolie knew whose book it was, and where it was supposed to be. “Shoo home, now. Go on. Shoo. I’m sure Redhale won’t like to find you gone.”
A large, leather-bound grimoire flips a few of its own pages before slamming shut and disappearing.
Jolie eyed the empty space where the tome had been, seriously doubting it had indeed shoo’d off home as she’d told it to. “You’ll have to excuse me, for now, Tiervolyn,” she told the tomb. “But I have an errant book to chase.” Moments later she was legging it up the stairs, in search of the wandering book.
Left Tomb
This area of the necropolis holds only one grave, made of black rock. Behind the sarcophagus stands a large statue made purely of onyx. The statue is of a large being in full armor and a helmet with a visor, keeping his face hidden. Spread from the statue's back are massive angelic wings, and within the hands of the statue is a book. As you study the work of art, you feel it is not just a statue but holds some magical purpose as well, perhaps you should leave it be and be on your way. The only place to go is to the east.
“There you are!” Jolie pointed an accusing finger at Redhale’s grimoire, huffing slightly as she ran into the tomb. “You’re going to be in an awful lot of trouble, you know, “ she scolded. “Come on now…” The necromancer soothed her voice down to something more friendly, beseeching, holding her palm up to the tome. “You’ll just get all dusty traipsing around these old places.” A green glimmer passed across her gaze and she smiled ever-so-sweetly. “Come to Tene.. Be a good book. I promise you, I wouldn’t –dream- of peeking at your pages.”
A large, leather-bound grimoire flips a few of its own pages before slamming shut and disappearing.
Jolie said, “D'oh.”
Back Tomb
This area of the necropolis is more of a walkway surrounded by various pillars and coffins. Despite its old age, it seems very clean from the many visits it has received from the necromancers in the area. To your north is the way out and to the south is a doorway, only covered by black cloth. A large stone cover with a lock is slightly pressed aside in the middle of the floor, it seems one of the necromancers, or someone sniffing around, left the path open. An ancient set of stairs leads down.
After a little more aimless and fruitless running about, Jolie finally tracked the grimoire down – finding it not, as she’d imagined, somewhere distant from the library but closer. Heartened by this, she offered it a smile. “There now. Almost home. Trouble averted. At least you’re a clever book, not like that third edition of Rosenberque’s treatise on bone extraction, shedding slime all ov…”
A large, leather-bound grimoire flips a few of its own pages before slamming shut and disappearing.
Jolie’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Right.” And off she went, trudging after the damn thing.
Necropolis Foyer
Inside this ancient looking tomb are large stone sarcophagi, each sealed and oddly locked. You see several necromancers standing by one of the massive graves, locking it just seconds before you can see what's inside. They turn to you with a cold gaze, and stare through your soul before walking out, almost ignoring you completely. Finding no way to get into the graves here you finally give up on trying to figure out what lays within them. You may go to your east, south, west, north and recently somebody has removed a panel in the floor that leads down.
Jolie said to the grimoire, “That’s it.” It was playing horrid tricks! She gestured to one of the necromantic acolytes lolling about taking a smoko on the sarcophagi. “You. And you, too, over there. Help me catch this book, will you?”
The youths blinked – they dare not disobey an order from the Thanatos Domina. One ran toward the book, the other took a sneakier approach from the rear of it, it case it bolted away from his eager comarade.
A large, leather-bound grimoire flips a few of its own pages before slamming shut and disappearing.
Crash! The two robed students clashed with the unmistakable sound of two heads cracking together.
Jolie shouted, "That's it! You blasted ... tome. No more Miss Nice Person. I'm telling on you!"
She stomped out of the foyer, determined to leave a note for Redhale regarding the absconded volume. “Then you’ll know it. Running me about on a wild goose chase…” And grumbling of the like.
Back at the Corpse, she scrawled a note and shoved it at Maladroit, who was thankfully lurking about the bar, making the patrons nervous. "Find Redhale. Tell him his book's gone feral."
The batwinged abomination slouched out of the tavern, and soon was winging away to evil-knows-where in search of the Dark Man.
Jolie then returned to the cemetery.
Graveyard Gates
In this area a massive metal gate stands, half open and unlocked it swings just slightly with a cold brush of the wind, creaking in need of repair. The rusted gate stretches out a few ways on both sides of you and the only way to enter is to the south, the way to the path is north. An ominous-looking shrine now stands to the east, its patronage unnaturally intent upon something; its worshipped is an other-worldly force which chills the very soul of any passers-by who do not serve him.
A skeletal dragon necromancer named Maghu is here.
A large, leather-bound grimoire appears in mid air and falls to the floor with a thud, several pages tearing themselves free during the descent.
Jolie had sulked off to find Maghu, and was just settling in for a good whinge session about magical texts and their various social maladjustments, when the tome itself plopped to the ground, scattering a few parchment leaves. She eyed it, narrowly. "Oh, you've decided to be nice now."
A large, leather-bound grimoire flips a few of its own pages before slamming shut and disappearing.
Jolie frowned, raising her gaze crossly to the bone dragon. "Do you see what I deal with? Do you?"
Maghu lowered his terrible, bony jaw toward the loosed pages, letting it hover there. A dim, cold voice in the back of her mind said. ~ It left you something ~
Jolie glanced to the mildewy ground, where the pages lay. "What do they say?"
Maghu lifted his skull again. Once more an archaic whisper tickled her thoughts, ~ I don’t have any eyes. ~
Jolie snorted, knowing damn well the dragon could have read them if he wanted to. Stepping over, she bent to pick them up, scanning each briefly, unable to read anything at all, as the pages were all uniformly black. "Well, I'll return them to Redhale. Unless..."
Maghu shook his hoary, moss-stained skull. ~ Don't even think about it. ~
Jolie peeked at the pages. They were still solid ebon. "Has to be writing on them.."
Maghu chuckled, in his grim and echoing way, and wandered off to intimidate some recently sired vampires.
A large, leather-bound grimoire appears in mid air and falls to the floor with a thud, several black pages tearing themselves free during the descent.
Redhale 's pages ruffled in the wind suspiciously before slipping out of Jolie's hands and plastering themselves over the paving, overlapping at odd angles and holding fast to the ground.
A large, leather-bound grimoire flips a few of its own dark pages before slamming shut and disappearing.
Jolie cussed like a Cenrili fishwife and tried peeling one of the pages off the path. "Oh, like -that- is it? Well, we'll see, Mister Smarty-pages."
Jolie tugged that page a little harder.
Redhale 's free-willed notes seemed intent on remaining where they were, as if they were simply part of the ground they had pressed themselves against. Perhaps a nail would catch an edge here or there, but otherwise they pages may as well have been stone themselves.
Jolie knelt on the ground, after several more futile minutes of tugging and more than one broken fingernail, staring at the black, obstinate leaves. "Listen. You... pages. Redhale's going to be mighty pissed about all this. So how about we make a little deal. I won't tell him that you escaped from the.. escaped book. You'll come with me peacefully, perhaps allowing me a tiny peek on the way, I'll return you to your damned tome, and all will be well. How 'bout that?"
The pages remained resilient, although one of the glyphs briefly glowed a bright silver-white, the light swelling and receding again in a beat.
Jolie blinked, and in the process all but missed that argent flash. "Ooooh," she grumbled, stabbing at the now-dark-again spot with her forefinger. "I saw that!" Her gaze narrowed. "I knew you could hear me. Bet you can't do it again."
The faint screams of several newly-sired vampires sounded from a distance.
Several other lights flashed in an apparently random order across the collection of pages. Once the final page had its say it flipped open like it was a book itself and pressed flat to take up twice as much of the pavement, apparently starting a trend as the other patches of darkness began to follow suit.
Jolie's eyes could barely keep up as each mark flared like lit magnesium powder, one sigil after another presenting itself. She read along eagerly, though much of it still made no sense, but from them she gleaned a secret or two, or the hint of them at least. "Yes..." she murmured. "That's better, keep going."
Maghu returned from his quest, ivory fangs in his ivory skull stained with clotted blood. ~ I told you to be careful ~ he said, to her mind, his colossal bone frame crackling as he curled his osseous tail about himself.
Redhale 's pages could comply with that instruction, and continued their spread across the area, climbing the gates and blotting out tombstones with their featureless darkness. No longer reading themselves out in glowing figures they simply seemed to wish to spread their darkness.
Jolie stood up, treading on the black leaves, careless now as to what they were or were or not saying. “What are you doing..?” she whispered. She didn’t like this new development at all.
The ancient saurian cackled in the back of her own skull, ~Now you’ve done it, little girl.~
The pages remained resilient, although one of the glyphs briefly glowed a bright silver-white, the light swelling and receding again in a beat.
Jolie said to Maghu, "Oh, shut up." She continued across the blackening ground, trailing her fingers along the dark where a tombstone ought to be. "Maghu?"
Maghu sighed, as best a creature comprised entirely of yellowed bones can do so. ~ Yes?~
"What are they doing?" She sounded a little panicky now.
Maghu said, ~ Wait. It is inevitable that you'll find out.~
Jolie pulled a displeased face at him, and went on following the pages that were spreading like a black plague across the boneyard.
The pages that had been climbing the gates had reached the top and, instead of folding over and running down the other side, continued to climb up into the sky, blotting out the entire world on the other side of the fencing.
Jolie backed away from the gates, her head canted up to watch the sky enfolded in darkness. One step.. two.. several more. She tripped on the tip of the bone dragon's tail. One massive, skeletal paw curled around her, setting her upright.
~Be still. And watch.~ hissed Maghu, making no sound at all.
Jolie, at that point, had very little choice she supposed.
From within the blackness at the north end of the graveyard several flashes of light ran across the runes, spreading in patterns and waves over whatever stories and spells had been written there, bouncing back and forth and interfering with each other until the patterns started to resemble pictures: Trees and structures glowing white amongst the spreading darkness.
Jolie remained silent, her jaw slightly agape at the spectacle unfolding, her knuckles whitened where her fingers still gripped the edge of one long talon as though using Maghu to keep herself from falling down again. This was … incredible. Amazing. And yes, perhaps, a little terrifying. The poor old boneyard! Never mind the ghosts and other residents… Jolie hoped all would turn out well. But then, she knew Redhale – and that was cause enough for worry to continue.
The pages had successfully blocked out any view to the north, although escape to the south still seemed possible; for now their spread had slowed to a halt. The images along the fully formed wall began to take more definite shapes, and the scene had taken on an element of depth as well; small wooden homes tucked behind glowing silver trees had emerged, and from them: A small figure, walking towards Jolie.
That figure may have seemed innocuous at that distance, but the circumstances of its arrival were anything but. The necromancer canted a look up to the dragon’s skull, a tiny splat of fresh vampire dropping from Maghu’s sardonic maw onto her forehead, where it stung briefly before she wiped it away. The dragon remained silent, though its bones thrummed with ancient magics, moreso now than usual. Jolie looked back to the approaching figure, her hand reaching for the ever-present poisoned knife at her side, and a powerful warding spell bubbling in her throat, ready in case the one walking toward them proved less than peaceful.
The focus of the scene had stepped out well beyond the border where the gates were, though amongst the mostly featureless pages it was hard to accurately perceive depth until the being, a small elven child, had walked up but a few metres from Jolie, where he stopped and stared unashamedly at the two figures he found himself confronted by.
Jolie stared right back. “Uh…” she summoned a faint smile from somewhere. “Hello?”
The venerable dragon, however, lowered its bloody jaws. Thrusting out his fleshless snout, Maghu poked it toward the boy, his vertebrae creaking loudly. ~He is not what he seems, girl. This is powerful magic. Almost as powerful as that of my last apprentice. Before I ate him. ~
The small figure's silvery eyes darted momentarily to Jolie as she spoke before flicking back to Maghu, his pale, glowing cheeks going slack at the intimidating appearance of the skeleton. His own voice was high and wavery, but not as hesitant as Jolie's, "What the hell is that?" Despite having a voice like a child's, he certainly didn't use the language of one.
Jolie frowned, peering around the dragon’s extended vertebral column.
Maghu drew his skull back again, mentally chortling.
“It’s a bone dragon,” she stated, rather flatly. The silver-eyed boy was disturbingly familiar, but she was damned if she could place how or from where she might know him. “Isn’t that obvious enough?”
~ And much more than that…. ~ murmured Maghu, so quiet a thought it may as well have been to himself. The next came louder: ~This boy is no child. He is not at all unlike myself - glutted to the gills on power, dark as night itself. Be cautious, girl. He knows you.~
Redhale 's little avatar pointed a finger at the dragon, "It doesn't belong here. The things with bones come from another place. He should be with them, not here in the forest." The forest which was slowly spreading around them. The south still to be a valid avenue for escape, but even behind the pair of necromancers saplings were sprouting into large, glowing trees, and a crystalline grass was spreading underfoot, "You don't belong here either, or you'd know that. What do you want from here?"
Jolie glanced around, catching the extent of the spread of the pages’ strange ‘plague’ as she peeked through the dragon’s rib-slats and the struts of wings where mummified membrane was torn, taking in the strange transformation. “I.. was chasing a book,” she said, a bit bewildered by all this, really. “Through the boneyard.” And with that said, her frown returned and she cast it upon the elven lad. “Which you’re standing in, by the way. I don’t know what all this…” she flipped her hand about to encompass the odd changes, the forest where a forest had no business being, “But it’s in my boneyard. It’s you who don’t belong here, boy.”
Maghu clocked Jolie on the crown of her head with his gore-smeared underjaw. ~Sh. You’re being a twit. What he says is true. We aren’t in the cemetery any more, little darkness. It’s his world we’re in.~
Jolie said, "Bugger that." She was clearly indignant, her arms folding across her chest. "I've got the Parasite up my backside, vampires swarming…enough is enough. No half-pint, silver-eyed little boy is going to tell me where I do and do not belong. This is my home..." The last was said to the 'child', firmly. "And if you wish to stay in it, you'll use your mann... ow!"
The dragon had thumped her on the head again, a little bit harder. ~Ask him his name.~
Jolie said rather sulkily to the peculiar child, rubbing the bump on her skull, "What's your name?"
Redhale 's child form spoke his name willingly enough, with a whiny undertone as if he was annoyed he even had to explain, "But you already knew that. I can tell because I've seen you before. You aren't the same one though, because you aren't complying. Things have a way of going around here and neither of you are acting right. If you don't know what you're here for then you should at least be careful, because you'll stick right out in this place."
~I can change that. But not yet. ~ Maghu flexed one dry paw, its joints creaking. ~I am still weak. And this is no place for the weak, girl. We ought to go. I have the feeling we might return, when I am strong again.~
Jolie chewed her lower lip, nodding to the dragon’s soundless words. She said to the child-figure, then, “This is all very queer. But alright. We’ll go for.. now.” Her glance up to Maghu was more than a little steely. “Apparently, we are to return at some point... Redhale.”
Redhale waved them away frustratedly, "You'll only make a mess of things. We have enough mess in here without you, don't make me pick up after you guys as well!" Despite his words that is just what he did, strolling over to the edge of the still growing scene and lifting up one of the pages as if it were, well, a piece of paper. He muttered to himself as he stacked the leaves into a pile, clearing the graveyard of the peculiar extension.
Jolie was drawn away from the frustrated child-image by Maghu's large claws, and hustled along the path that led deeper into the cemetery via a sharp-ended snout jabbed into her back where necessary to keep her moving and not blustering.
~Walk.~ the dragon said. ~Without moving your mouth at the same time. It's not impossible.~
Jolie mumbled something to herself about shovels and burying things, but did as bid, promising herself to have a stern talk to the real Redhale.. or the bigger one... the Dark Man... about his damned book.
Redhale 's young apparation was working quickly to clear the graveyard now, stopping only for a moment when some far off shout seemed to call to him. The even only made him work faster and soon enough he was tearing the final pages from the sky itself, peeling the last one off from inside it to cause both the black paper and himself to finally vanish.
Jolie would glance back, only once, to find the graveyard as it usually was, and no forest nor any boy sight. “Am I allowed to talk yet?”
~No.~ said Maghu, pushing her on.