RP:Nothing Shows Concern Like a Blade in the Gut

Part of the Agitation Arc

Summary: Feeling the agony of Larewen's literal gifting of her heart to Emrith, Trajek rushes to his MIstress's aid - only to discover her wounds are self-inflicted. Infuriated by this show of weakness, he turns the basilisk blade on her, thus beginning the slow decline of the elf's mind.

The Abyssal Forest

Larewen walked quietly through the Dark Forest, en route to the manse that she called home. There was something off about the way she moved - there was no grace to it, and she was not far from lurching along. Her skin was abnormally pale, contrasting starkly with the corruption that webbed under it. Those sensitive to magic might notice that the necromancer’s was depleted; she had done something to exhaust most of her supply of mana, and whatever she had done had impacted her greatly. Her features betrayed pain, though her eyes hinted at it being something emotional, not physical.

Trajek had been scouring through the underbelly of Cenril the night Larewen had pulled out her heart; she was his Mistress, and the touch of her magic thrummed through him more than most. When she was hurt, he could feel it, and at that moment she had carved from her person at great cost. He felt her closer when she stumbled through the Dark Forest, and without being bidden he was channeling through loam and mud, through hard soil and dry clay...and when he surged through leaf and root of the forest, the basilisk blade was in his hand. He was expecting an army---what else could harm Larewen so? He was up, his eyes swinging, but he saw only the necromancer. The question thrummed between them more than it was spoken: ‘Enemies. Where?’

There was no need for the elf to draw breath: she was dead - and yet she did, and it was labored, as if under some unseen strain. She kept to the eldritch glow of the path that she had created to guide others to House Dragana, only veering off of it occasionally when she struggled to keep her balance. When Trajek caught up with her, she was leaning with a gloved hand against one of the twisted trees. Her gaze turned toward him, mismatched eyes noting the blade. The silver one was dulled to a stormy grey, thus belying how badly her present state was. When she spoke, it appeared to take more effort than it ought to have. “How would I know?” There was bitterness in her tone.

The Mistress’ Hound wore a perplexed look on his ghastly features. There were no wounds he could see on her. There were no screams of the dying, nor were there any scent of blood, bile, or evacuated bowels. She was wounded, but there were no wounders; she was injured, and by all accounts, it did not seem to be completely physical. He strode into her path, blocking it as surely as a armed boulder, and he wrapped his hand around his throat. “Who...did...this…” He eyed her up and down and the bitterness in her tone was matched by the bile in his sneer.

Larewen pushed off of the tree just as Trajek blocked her path. This caused her brows to knit together behind her veil in frustration. “Did what?” she breathed, seemingly oblivious to what he was referring to. The necromancer was not entirely aware of how closely her magic had bound them; Trajek’s behavior struck her as odd, but there wasn’t enough energy or desire in her to question why he obstructed her path. She moved to stumble around him, wanting only to climb into her bed.

The ghoul stopped her where she stood with a single hand; that alone should be evidence enough that her power, what had kept him in check for so long, had weakened. But if she needed more evidence, he released his energies into her shoulder. Let her struggle. Let her fight. Let her marshal what defenses she had. In her wounded state, she may be able to fight against it for some time, but she would inevitably end on her knees. ‘Weak’ sparked from his mind to her own, carried through his body into her own from the tentacles of energy that pierced her shoulder and sap her of even more strength.

In the wake of casting a spell that allowed her not only to rip her heart from her very body, but to exist with it separate from her being, there was not enough energy left to maintain the wards that would have warned her of the burst of magic sent into her shoulder. There was also nothing to dampen its effects. Larewen felt the dark magic as it pierced her flesh, as it took hold upon her muscles and drew from them what little energy there was. Her hand lifted, slapping at his forearm as she felt her knees attempt to buckle under the force exerted upon her. The single syllable that formed within her mind drew from her throat a low growl. “Do not test me, Trajek,” the necromancer threatened, even as she fought the desire to collapse. The silver eye dulled further and her vision darkened - the eye was fueled by her magic, as well.

His hand remained firm upon her shoulders, and though his fingers did not pierce her skin, the strands of necromantic energies he commanded did. They wrapped around muscle and tendons and drew tight. They pushed through the walls of blood vessel and arteries, and they surged through them throughout her entire body. They were tunnels, if nothing else, that connected every inch of her undead body, and though they were unused, they were whole. Through lungs, through limbs, through her esophagus, and through her...heart? The energies, as black as bile, found no purchase through the organ that connected artery to vessel to capillary. ‘Weak.’ he answered her threat before the viscous tendrils within her solidified, before they surged, before they arced and burned with a wave of his power that would, if nothing else, most certainly put her close to a loss of consciousness.

A dark fire spread through her body as that necromantic energy surged through every bit of her being: as it discovered the void where her heart had been. Then, it became more tangible and drew from her throat a sharp cry of pain. Her vision swam before her and she stumbled backward, freeing herself from his grip. In retaliation, she foolishly drew upon what little magic remained within her to combat the invading spell. He would feel it, the small burst of arcane energy that flushed his from her system, and then her vision would darken entirely as she fell backwards, only to return once she’d landed on the ground. Mismatched eyes rose to the ghoul, her features twisted in a sudden rage. “I am not,” she hissed, drawing herself up once more. Too much more, and she’d likely find herself comatose again. She reached for Trajek then, but not with her hands. The darkness around them swirled toward him at her command, meaning to entwine itself around his limbs and draw him from her path.

Trajek felt her pittance of a spell burn him from her body, and the ends of his slender fingers sizzled and smoked, the arcane finding the culprits and burning them for good measure. But he had a better measure of her power than she would most likely had liked, and he could tell just how vicious of a spell she was throwing at him. The darkness came to the hand that called it; Trajek’s hand rose as well, and the basilisk blade it held was raised. The same energy she called to her fingers sparked along the macabre blade and pulled from it, drawn to the mass she was conjuring. But what took its place, what lined the blade, what darkened the bone and sent poison welling at its jagged edges was darker, fouler, and wholly evil. When the darkness she held was thrown at him, when it tore through the air turning moisture into vapor and burning the life from insects in its path, the basilisk blade rose and fell into a single stroke. It tore through the cloud, severing hemisphere from hemisphere, the Shade Creature’s power dulling, dimming, and ultimately corrupting the mass. It fell to his feet inert, little more than a dead, black ash. “Weak,” He hissed out from his opened throat. The single word was soft, but its volume rose almost instantaneously, almost as if he had propelled himself forward and slammed his blade through her abdomen.

Normally, perhaps, it might have been more difficult for him to so easily deflect the spell. Normally, there would have been a lot more power behind it. This wasn’t normally though. Her eyes rolled at his insistence that she was weak. That was, perhaps, the biggest insult one could toss in her direction; it was the one thing she did not want to be. Again, she moved to step around him, to continue her journey, and then she stopped. Not because she suddenly had a reaction to the insult, but because something felt… wrong. The elf watched Trajek lung forward, and then she felt… wrong. It took Larewen a moment too long to realize what had happened and what air had gathered in her lungs left her throat in a rush as the hilt of the basilisk blade slammed against her corset. Pain radiated through her center, moving outward and her jaw fell slack, gloved hands falling over his and curling around them. Mismatched eyes fixed on the ghoul, dumbfounded. “You… You… stabbed me…?” she… asked? It was as if she wasn’t quite believing what she was seeing, what she was feeling.

“Weak,” He hissed back at her as he placed his other hand on the hilt. There was no malice in the word, nor was there hate in the viscid orbs within his eye sockets. But there was no love, no admiration, nor was there loyalty. ‘You are weak,’ the words radiated from the wound in her gut as did the foulness of the Shade Creature’s magic. ‘But, I will make you powerful once again.’

The blade twisted, and the full force of the Shade erupted. It was not a killing blow, but it would put her out for quite some time.

Agony flooded through her gut, radiating outward a second time until she felt it in every fiber of her being. The corruption that oozed from the blade called to the darkness that tainted her blood, and together they danced within her body. There was so much pain that she was unable to cry out, and so her mouth fell open in a silent scream. He was the among the last of those the elf would have expected to turn his blade on her, and yet here he was, driving the very weapon she had helped him create through her belly. Blood, blackened by corruption, seeped from the wound, a foul smell permeating the air around him. Then, the darkness came. She began to fall, her weight falling upon the blade as consciousness left her. If he didn’t withdraw it, she ran a very real possibility of worsening the wound by driving the blade upward.

The Ghoul was quick to catch her with his free hand, his palm pressed against her sternum. He slid the blade from her body before she could injure herself even more, and when the blade pulled free from her body the corruption welded the wound shut. He shouldered the unconscious body of his Mistress, of the Weak, of the one who needed his help now more than she had ever had before. He walked, but he did not walk towards House Dragana. His direction was Cenril, his destination her rebirth.