RP:Segue: The Eye of Vakmatharas, Part 2

Part of the Venturil's Bane Arc

This is a Necromancer's Guild RP.

The Eye of Vakmatharas, a powerful relic sacred to the god of death, continues to take its toll on the Necromancer Tenebrae.

Along Fengoth River, Venturil

…what cards to keep, and what to throw away.

This was the wisdom Tenebrae earned in those long hours of darkness while she writhed and screamed, laughed and wept by the river Fengoth.

The relic fastened to her brow – literally, for she could not tear off, though she’d clawed her flesh bloody trying – ran her through the relentless and horrific gauntlet of torture necessary to the trial that would determine her worthiness to bear it.

She wasn’t worthy. Couldn’t be. Or why was she buckled up on the ground like a smashed wasp?

Or was she...

Because, said the Diadem, Tenebrae was also at some point far beyond this in time, several points, a thousand points.. innumerable. All time existed at once, said the lesson that was really the smallest glimpse into the mind of a God. And matter is… a relative concept.

Kings and cultures come and go. But the dead are always with us…

Being that this relic was a gem forged in the hand of the God of Death, it is a fact that no-one could survive the brutal onslaught of knowledge, the torment of the dark magics radiating inward from the sacred gem.

Signs and wonders. The eternal Rise and Fall. Death and Life, dancing cheek to cheek.

Only the dead could even begin to dare this ordeal, and in doing so Tenebrae would learn to the depths of her undead marrow the very meaning and value of her existence, for she also glimpsed what it was to be countless, disconnected particles reduced to the building-blocks of existence, floating on a restless wind.. Watched every atom of herself from the dawn of time to the end of time, in its journey from one expression of matter to another, and the inevitable dissolution of all those things.

Gods speak a language that only stars may understand. And we are their words.

Tenebrae at last understood the nature of Death. And that true Evil was not the seeking of dissolution, but the desire to halt all ebb and flow. Stasis was the Enemy. Death was the dragon which devoured Evil and Good alike, and spat it all back out again.

She knew so many things, now.

...what to throw away… and what to keep.

This would determine the level of sanity with which she would emerge from this ordeal. And that, she rightly guessed, was the entire point. For the mantle of High Priestess was a heavy one, and not for the weak.

“I am not worthy,” she said, at some point, and meant it.

“I am worthy,” she said, and meant that, too.

.