RP:The Cost of Bravery
This is a Mage's Guild RP.
This is a Devout's Guild RP.
Part of the The God of Undeath Arc
Part of the The Serpent's Pass Arc
Continued from So Take Me With You
Summary: After Lanlan and Valrae successfully find themselves on the Serpent's Pass and defend themselves against danger, the ground opens up. They discover a forgotten temple to the Goddess Selene, a hidden tool, and are confronted with the unknown forces that guard the Pass.
Part One: Rises the Moon
Valrae had been unable to think of a clever and appropriately biting retort to Lanlan’s claim that she’d been showing off. It was one part embarrassment at the backhanded compliment and two parts distraction as the earth began to open up and create havoc around them.
She’d yanked unceremoniously from danger by the drow again, though this time she doesn’t scream, and she can feel her shoulder begin to smart. There was little time to complain. He’d whisked them away from danger and she closed her eyes tightly as the world fell away from their feet. The witch clings to him as if he might drop her, whispering profanity as she opens an eye to look down. Her stomach cartwheels down as she watches the forest’s devastation. The black hole below them yawned frightfully.
She doesn’t seem concerned that he’s still holding onto her as the earth begins to quiet again, though she does loosen the death grip she’d held on him. “And I’m the showoff?” She asks, tilting her face up toward him just as he violently pushes her away. Her breath leaves her in a painful gasp as she’s careened backward and the tree shatters and splinters between them. She covers her ears as dirt and leaves rain down. A twig snags in the unwinding braid of her hair but she remains otherwise unharmed. She had only a heartbeat of time to grin, a laugh caught in her throat, before it turned to shock and more screaming as Lanlan was pulled down.
She screamed his name twice as she began floating uselessly down. It wasn’t fast enough, she wasn’t sure what to do with her legs and arms. She didn’t understand how the magic that kept her suspended worked. Panic and fear crowded her throat. Desperate, she closed her eyes and let the world bleed into burning stars. It took only a heartbeat for her to reappear, clinging to Lanlan like the stubborn, and possibly evil, vine. Quickly, she pointed her wand where it had entangled him and it released in a flurry of ash and ember. The sound of the top of the tree splintering and smacking against the rock below warned her that she might have appeared too late to save either of them from a gruesome, possibly impaling death. She closed her eyes again, a silly and pointless effort as they were surrounded in near absolute blackness, and let the safety of her out of time stars surround them. The sounds of ruin and destruction fell away for a moment only to return to the more quiet finality of the earth settling as they landed somewhere at the center of the newly opened sinkhole.
The dark sky loomed far and cold away from them. They were enveloped in the opened wound of earth, surrounded by broken trees and unsteady rock. The light struggled to reach them. Valrae landed painfully on a splintered tree trunk and hissed as pain shot into her thigh. “Lanlan?” She was still holding onto his hand, squinting at his face in the darkness. “Are you alright?”
Lanlan was falling quickly despite his magic. He tore at the vines entangled around his chest, imagining the branches rocking off the bottom of this pit, impaling him. Or maybe the trunk would roll, tightening it's parasitic ropes until he was underneath it. Then he'd be crushed. If he wasn't bound by this neck, arms pinned to his sides, he might be able to cast himself free. Instead he rakes with his only free hand trying to wedge a gap between his airway and the vine. But it's too late to do anything else, he closes his eyes and braces himself for impact. Suddenly his hands were wrapped around again by much warmer vines, and then hot. Burning hot. The smell of fire and then suddenly he's no longer falling, so he opens his eyes.
The remnants of the vines burn away into ash and float as he settles down onto more even ground. "I am," he manages to whisper to Valrae, amid surprise. It was an impressive feat to free him as she did, while moving at the speed of gravity and without burning him much. He'd have marks from the vine, and he feels the tender parts of his chest and neck where they were compressed. He winces. "You saved me." It still hurts to talk, he can finish thanking her later. He squeezes her hand a little tighter before letting it go, and then he stands up. The sounds of catastrophe quiet. Leaves and dust still flutter and Lanlan looks around to take stock of their position. Then back at Valrae, squinting in the darkness. Light only spilled over the rim of the great earthen cauldron they fell into.
He worked his will into some of the floating leaves, colliding these and some dust with stolen rays of light. And his magic. One by one, the leaves became bobbing jellyfish with trailing tails, washing out some of the black with bluish white light. He looked at Valrae. It wasn't equal to saving his life, but she could see the ground now. Such a small thing for him to do, but it felt taxing to do much more; he was still trying to figure out what happened to him.
The drumbeat had begun again, louder within the confines of the earth. She takes a step forward. As her boot touches the stone a thick bloom of strangely glowing moss springs forth. It was green and blue and shining in the dark, illuminating the path a step ahead of her. She followed it and as she did the path grew. The song grew. It led her toward the mouth of a very dark cave she hadn’t spotted before. Without thinking, Valrae followed. Everywhere she stepped, the mossy light bloomed and marked the way ahead. “Are you seeing this?” She asks Lan, stopping only once to make sure he was following her. “Do you hear it too?”
The narrow cave ended abruptly. Watery blue green light bathed the opening in the tunnel. It appeared much brighter than it was in the darkness of earth that surrounded it. As Valrae neared, shapes began to swim into vision.
Selene's Moonlit Grove
The hollowed chamber was filled with flora and fauna of the likes she’d never witnessed before. The trees grew tall and turned in on themselves like spirals. Their leaves were glossy and wide, seeming to glow with the light of the chamber in various jewel tones of every blue imaginable between the faintest teal and the deepest cerulean. Flowers with pointed petals remincant to tiger lilies of bleached bone white bloomed with moss as thick as carpet that climbed the jutting rock that dotted around the underground forest.
There was a herd of something akin to white doe, their legs long and impossibly thin, with dark sad eyes as wide as dinner plates, grazing in a rounded hill soft with tall pale grass. The tall ceiling of the underground world curved into a dome high overhead, dripping with vines and lush greenness that sparkled like a strange night sky with small glowing flower buds. It opened up at the center, the wide face of Vaalane’s pale mirror circled by the earth.
Directly below the opening was a raised pool of crystal clear water, floating impossibly off of overgrown steps of stone. It flooded over the mossy sides of the overgrown lip, emptying into the river below that cut through it and disappeared into the mouth of a dark cave to the west. There was a statue rising from the center of the pool, the white stone bathed in silver moonlight lovingly sculpted into a breathtaking likeness of what could only be a Goddess, her long hair free and hands raised up as if she might call down the moon. Behind it, overgrown and crumbled with time, was what Valrae could only assume was an abandoned temple. The shape was muddled but still apparent. Wide columns of stone, stately stairs that led to forgotten rooms and unknown secrets.
“What is this place?” She breathes, as if Lanlan might have the answers. He’d followed, hadn’t he? The witch hadn’t stopped to check.
She takes an unsteady step down, her boot landing softly in the thick moss. The earth staggered like a staircase down into the waiting cavern. As if it was meant, as if it had been waiting for them to find it. The path forward was clear to her, the sound of the steady drum beating so loudly inside of her head now that she could hardly hear her own thoughts. She walked surely, as if she’d known the way for a thousand lifetimes, through the strangely spiraling trees and tall rock. White rabbits with the horns of a stag darted away from them, running like fish through a stream as they sprinted deeper into the forest.
Lanlan followed after her, clumsily at first, ungainly as if only recently he’d learned to walk. Once she turned to make sure he was with her he regained his composure in a snap, instinctually. He only nods for now, doesn’t speak. Yes, he can see and hear. It doesn’t inspire the same sense of wonder in him that it does in her, however. Drums means people, and people mean danger. The jellyfish that light up the cave seem to draw their colors directly from him; as they grow brighter, he dims. It was terrible to use Valrae as bait like this, but she more or less volunteered, and he was being vigilant to their surroundings.
It seems every step brought a new sign of danger, as a mysterious glowing substance permeates the air from the rocks Valrae leads them along. He pulls a scarf over his mouth and nose and finishes walking. He’ll levitate the rest of the way, floating behind Valrae like a balloon on a string. His eyes are on the cave walls, that’s where the ambush would come from. What looks like a shadow to a human could be a monster, another cave, a booby trap. The only dangers he saw were easily avoidable, slippery looking worm like creatures that crawled in and out of sight, a poisonous film (for it must be poisonous) shimmering on their exoskeletons, waiting for something to fall low enough for the swarm to take them. Small plants that seemed to stretch toward the light created under Valrae’s steps, uncurling a vine with tempting and toxic berries filling up with life in the seconds of light they could snatch, before curling in again and siphoning it away down in their twisted roots.
Then they emerged into some kind of atrium, and the danger became ever more real. It was the worst kind, draped in a stunning beauty that Lanlan couldn’t help but suspend his vigilance for to admire. The light of the moon seemed to swim through the space like an ocean, and even though he didn’t need to, he willed his jellyfish into it. He knew it was just crystalline dust that was lifted up into the air, reflecting Valaane’s light infinitely, and not some miracle…
Even the deer like creatures, twisted in their shape by their time in darkness, seemed beautiful. Their eyes seeing everything there is to see, and seeing Valrae and then seeing him too, dimmed as he was. They only regarded him as a passing novelty, strange to be here with them, but not dangerous. He saw they’re stalk-like legs expertly navigating the craggy terrain effortlessly, decisively striking the ground and bouncing off of it like they weighed nothing, and only used gravity when they needed.
This wasn’t the underdark he knew; that one must be far below. Or maybe it didn’t reach this place. The thought made him feel filthy, that he might drag the vileness that accompanied him always to a place so untouched by it. He followed Valrae to where the woman oversaw the river that seemed to flow from the moon to the cave to the pool and wherever it went after that. He averted his gaze from the statue’s, only to find it looking back at him in the mirrored water.
It was the first definite sign of people that must be long gone. And yet the carving didn’t seem so ancient to him. As he descended the natural steps he thought that maybe this was a place designed intelligently. But he couldn’t deny that it also came about naturally. So which was it? Valrae knew where to go, and when she asked him about the place again, he only narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Doesn’t she know? Surely he doesn’t, but the alacrity that she finds the way implies familiarity. He keeps his silence even though he doesn’t feel so much the pain anymore, this time only not to further profane the place with his voice. It’s compounded when he feels the sudden urge to possess the strangely horned hares that cross their path. What beautiful things they would be to have! What a horrible crime it would be to remove them.
The strangest thing to him, was how she led him in directions that seemed impossible. Areas of the cave that he neglected to consider because they seemed to be sheer rock, or a mossy mound. They’d crack into natural passages and drop into wooded dens. The forest itself seemed so thick as to be impenetrable, until they walked a path that must’ve always been there. It seemed apparent ahead of them, but as he turns to look behind, he feels lost.
While Lanlan dulled, Valrae shone. It was as if she reflected the light of the strange space around her. Her golden hair paled to silver moonlight in the Vaalane drenched grove. Where Lanlan had suspected danger she knew only wonder and a sense of rightness that settled deep within her bones. Delight formed laughter that tumbled from her lips as his enchanted jellyfish rose up to join the magic of this sacred space.
The witch did not turn away from the Goddesses' softy carved face as Lanlan had, instead she tipped her chin up to greet her like a child might her mother, and her smile was radiant. She’d asked Lanlan what her heart had already known and while he did not answer her with words and she had yet to look back to see his face she could feel his answer. Yes, she knew.
Her feet carried her to the pool of clear water, not toward the temple as she had first suspected they might, and the way rose up to her feet as if in greeting. At the water’s edge, she slipped her bag from her shoulders. The rings on her fingers were next, discarded carelessly on the moss soft ground. Then her boots, the ties of her hair, her pants. When all that remained to protect her modesty was her tunic she slipped into the cool water with a sigh.
The witch dared not utter a word as the water rose over her skin, cooling as it pulled the aches that their arduous journey had pressed into her muscles. The ripples that surrounded her body were luminous, glowing with the light of the Vaalane of their world, blue and green and silver, and they rolled over the smooth surface of the water to splash toward the river waiting below.
The drumbeat reached its crescendo around them, the ritualistic music reaching a fever’s pitch as she reached the center of the pool. Magic rose around them, as timeless as the hallowed ground that held them, and it permeated the air as thickly as a thundercloud ready to break. Valrae tipped her head back, reaching her arms back to mirror the stone of Selene, and called down the moon as the final beat of the drum sounded.
The water rose around her. Submerged her, tunneled up as if it had been caught in some unseen and unfelt cyclone of wind. The river ran backwards, filling the pool to bursting, rising up in droplets of glittering rain that fell upwards toward the sloped dome of earth. It stole the air from her lungs, though there was no pain in this, and she could taste the salt of the sea. Light surrounded her, bathed her as much as the blessed water did, and within it visions of an unfathomably beautiful woman flashed beyond her eyes. Though she could not truly see her face, she felt the power searing through her core as she tipped back and began to float down and down and down… A voice called out, powerful and ageless as a wave crashing against the shore, as Valrae felt her eyes close to the black that reached up to surround her.
When she rose from the pool again, gasping, the water of the grove crashed into rightness again. The rain fell, the stream turned its tides. The pool quieted, only the ripples from the witch’s body running across it as she emerged from the water to kneel on the moss covered stone beside it. Breath heaving, Valrae looked up toward Lanlan with wonder in her eyes. They were strange now, wide and dark, but no longer reflecting the drow or the grove as eyes should. Intead, they were filled with light and the wonder of what she’d seen. Until she blinked, looking down at the athame that she held in her hands.
Lanlan wasn’t sure what was happening now, or what compelled Valrae to begin shedding clothes. Of course he wanted to do it too, the water was so clean and inviting and seemed to irradiate comfort. But he could feel repulsion too, seeming to come from within; it wasn’t his place. Something would happen to him if he did, these types of places were cursed for people like him. He decides to pay attention to other things, like the strangely crowned rabbits that curiously approached Valrae’s pile of clothes and things. He shoos them away, but they recoil only slightly, just enough that they can sniff his fingers without touching them. He snatches up her rings at least, before they can do anything silly with them.
Then he loses track of them as a typhoon suddenly swallows Valrae whole, the cursed waters (he knew it!) engulfing her and trapping her in a spinning wall. He can only see shadows of her through the twister, but still, he rushes up to the lip of the pool and tries to plunge his hand in. He can only weather so much of the pain, the water pressure is so great. His hand is forced out and he’s forced to watch her drown from behind the veil. He slides both his wand and his staff from his sleeves, and touches them together. Upon bringing them apart, a thin tendril of energy connects them, icy blue and shedding snowflakes, before he casts the spell to freeze the entirety of the fountain. Frost shimmers on the waters before dissipating instantly. Its repelled his spell and he knows it. He scurries back down the path the way he came, if she can hold on, he might be able to get help, or find some clue as to how to stop this.
He doesn’t get far before the waters begin to recede, and Valrae emerges unharmed. She’s alive, but somehow changed. He can see it, and raises a pair of fingers to lightly touch the side of her face. “Your face…?” But he’s lost in the mystery of her eyes, fathomless, infinite, revealing nothing.
“You must go now,” commands a booming voice, full of authority. Lanlan grabs Valrae’s hand and slaps her rings into it. Behind them, in front of them, all around them, new forms begin to take place. Shimmering sand, white as snow, trickles from some unseen space and piles onto the ground. They form the shape of people, men and women, and then become them. The only evidence of their strange arrival in the glittering dust at their feet. They look to be chiseled from stone, where their skin is evident. Much of it is covered by loose fitting clothes, dull in color. Humble. Their stances are firm, disciplined.
But they don’t match this place. They stand out even moreso than Lanlan, perhaps infinitely more than Valrae. They were trespassers too. They weren’t even guarding anything in particular. “I agree,” says Lanlan, his voice carrying well enough in here, and he shoves Valrae’s clothes into her hands, over the athame. A little sleight of hand finds the blade slithered into her satchel, and it feels much heavier than it did before. They must be guarding the athame, maybe they didn’t see it in her hands yet.
Once Valrae was ready, Lanlan would leave happily, exiting through the same tunnel they came in. They wouldn’t make it very far. “Wait,” the same voice commanded. “Leave the bag.” Lanlan, or a version of him, did leave the bag. He stops in his tracks, turns around slowly with his hands raised and advances toward them. Then, ever so slowly, with no sudden moves and no provocation, he lifts the strap of the bag from his shoulder and lowers it to the ground. Very slowly. Giving the glamoured shades enough time to make their escape, or that was the goal.
“My face?” She repeats, her hand reaching up to join his. She’s halted by the booming voice, so jarred from her daydreamers wonder that she yelps. Whatever Lanlan had begun to tell her was lost as a new threat emerged. He slaps the rings in her hand and she closes them in her fist mindlessly, gripping them so tightly her knuckles turned white.
She stood quickly, soaked to the bone, and felt herself shifting behind the drow self consciously as she now recognized her own state of undress. Still blinking dazedly, she peers from behind him toward the new arrivals. They were strange, seemingly carved of stone and sand and much too bright against the peaceful grove. A sense of danger sent a trill of fear dancing along her spine. Their eyes were black and empty as they gazed impassively back at her. Suddenly she felt very afraid and very small. Lanlan broke her from her prey like paralysis as he began shoving her things toward her and she struggled to balance them all. She didn’t notice that his quick and clever hands had taken the athame and slipped it into her bag.
As she clumsily dresses, not bothering with the mass of tangled curls that swung wetly around her shoulders, she finally realizes that the strange, spilling whiteness that spills around them is sand. With her boots on well enough, her pants crumpled messily within, Valrae nods that she’s ready to go and follows the drow toward what must be the exit. She hesitates at their parting command, looking at Lanlan with desperate and panicked eyes, “My bag?” She hisses out an incredulous whisper. But he was already defending them, his wits sharp where hers were still dull and dreamy.
The witch hurries away with him quietly as their illusioned mirrors comply. Walking as quickly and as silently as she dared, she headed back toward where they’d fallen. “Take my hand,” She whispers, holding her own out toward Lanlan. As soon as she had his own hand in her grasp, she would close her eyes tight and began whispering the lyrical incantation that summoned the cosmos around them. The stars rearranging around them to bring them to a new place, or so she had hoped. Just as the magic begins to take hold, a loud sneeze comes from somewhere inside of her bag, breaking her concentration.
Shouting erupted behind them. Valrae turned the air blue with cursing. “Run!” She shouts, pushing or pulling Lanlan down the tunnel. Thinking more quickly now, she spins and flings a hand out infront of her. A blast of magic erupts from her hands as a shout of pain and effort falls from her lips. The tunnel behind them begins to collapse but before the witch can experience the sweet taste of satisfaction the white sands begin to slide through the ruined stone and form again as the shapes of strangers. She turns to run again, hoping Lanlan had continued ahead of herself, and her lungs protest with the effort. The air finally gave way, going from the cold dampness of the earth to the sweeter freshness of the skies, and the moonlight that had filtered down from the hole they’d fallen in swims before her eyes.
It wasn’t until she broke free of the tunnel that she reached for Lanlan’s hand again. Calling to her spell again, she attempted to send them back to the Selene Island that they’d known. The last thing she saw before she closed her eyes and the stars burned everything to black was the scowling, stone faces of their pursuers.
Part Two: There and Back Again
Sanguine Pool
Lanlan takes Valrae’s invisible hand in his as they slither down the caverns away from their pursuers. He feels his distraction pop, bursting into confetti and glitter as soon as they touch it. Shortly after is the shouting. They make haste through the tunnel and come out the other side, but they’ve crossed the same distance in much faster time. “Bless you…?” Lanlan says, looking quizzically at Valrae, though the sound seemed to have come from her bag, he doesn’t have time to question it. “We can’t let them have it,” he says, but she knows. She’s even willing to collapse the tunnel on them, these strange pursuers. To crush them.
But they won’t be smothered like this. Their essence slips through cracks in the form of the same trickling sand. Lanlan whips up a gust of magic, taking it into his lungs through his nose, and sneezes. The result is much amplified, the gust blowing sharply at the gathering sand piles. They weather it of course. He catches Valrae’s hand again as they reach the place where the earth gave way.
He knows where they’re going now, to travel by starlight again. He holds tight to the witch as she drags him through space and time back to the place they started. In the cavern, an afterimage of Lanlan is left standing alone, taunting their pursuers with an easy and condescending smile. Then it too, is gone. The monks seem unaffected by this immaturity however, and only disintegrate back into sand, which blows away into nothingness momentarily.
Back in front of the well, Lanlan has only two things on his mind. He puts a hand on Valrae’s shoulder and smiles gleefully, she was here. He was here. They made it out. And the other thing, he opens Valrae’s satchel triumphantly and reaches in to grab the athame, the ultimate prize of their endeavor. But as soon as he reaches in his countenance becomes a sour grimace. “What is this?” He pulls it out by the antler. “What the-” he drops everything and takes a dramatic step back. The furry white thing lands in the soft pile of Valrae’s bag and gives its head a shake before sniffing at the bag’s opening. Another one crawls out. “I thought your bag seemed heavy, but it’s not my place to judge.”
He looks at Valrae expectantly. “Is it in there?” He wasn’t going to touch that bag again. What if they made a mess?
Valrae’s answering smile was bright and instant. The moment stretched by, long and slow like a summer afternoon. Just the two of them, breathless and whole, savoring the taste of victory. He ended it by looking away, reaching into her back. She watches with wide eyes, confused as he pulls a wriggling jackalope from her bag by its horns. “Oh don’t hurt it!” The witch protests, fighting a laugh as he steps back. It landed on its ample and fluffy bottom.
“Stowaways!” She accuses the pair of them, though her tone was delighted rather than condemning as she crouches down to inspect them. They were curious and not very shy as they sniffed at her outstretched hand, pink noses twitching. The athame forgotten, she scoops the closest one up. It was the plump one, soft and round, with big moony eyes. “He’s a he.” She announces surely, after a very animated tussle for inspection. He wriggled in her arms, kicking. She didn’t release him.
“Oh right,” Valrae blinks at Lanlan’s anticipating look. She places the jackalope back on the floor of the cave gently before reaching back into her bag. It only took a moment for her to draw the athame out. It was beautiful, the craftsmanship beyond anything mortal hands could have dreamed of fashioning, and it gleamed like a deadly chip of Vaalane in her hands. Suddenly, the grotto felt crowded with watchful shadows. She stuffs it back in her bag nervously. “We should go.” She says seriously. But she collects the stowaways before leading them toward home again.
“What should we name them?” She asks Lanlan, feeling safe again as the fresh night air of their own time greeted her with a salted whispers fluttering over her cheeks. They might argue over it on their way back toward Cenril, this time using only the magic of Valrae’s broom. As the sun began to bid the stars blinking in the sky farewell, painting the eastern sky in shades of pale lavender and soft pinks, they set out for 1 Reverie Court.