RP:The Invisibles

Background

This is part of the Kurgan's Run story arc.

Colton and Jolie enact the perilous ritual to banish the Obsidian Pool to the planes of pure Chaos, destroying the bubble of magic that has kept them protected from the Dark - and its several sources - as well as invisible to their companions and Eldritch alike.

Also In the Main Hall

Something was not… right. She’d never completed this ritual before, and couldn’t know that nobody had for almost nine centuries – for good reason. It was unstable, it was risky, and carried dangers that the man who’d first jotted the spell in the margins of a sacred book, finding nothing sacred, had neglected to mention – on purpose. Ironic, or perhaps fateful or both then, that the very man who did so would become the twisted entity controlling that well full of protoplasmic chaos, and that it would be used in the attempt to banish it – and him – from the world, absolutely. She dare not break concentration, dare not risk ceasing the canta’s weave of sounds, to study the clot of midnight hanging over Colton or exclaim on it, but she was certain it was not darkness that ought to be gathering around the avatar of Light here. Something really wasn’t right… And that feeling grew with every passing moment, to a pitch that made her feel ill and crawled on her flesh like insects. Ceasing the ritual, however, was not an option – she could kill them both, or worse, by doing so. The shadows gathered and gathered, spilling out of the well in great splashes now, ragged shapes that flapped like black rags in a terrible wind and flocked to gather around the thin globe of magic, flattening against it, peeling away again. There weren’t many options here, if things went horribly awry. The conjurer –should be- the conduit for light…. And Jolie’s stark-white eyes would widen as she realised that he wasn’t looking much like one at all, though she…. And the interrupting dawn of that thought came as the last guttural words spilled over lips that would bring the dark crashing down into her, possessing her, bending her spine back in an agonised arch – no balance, to hold it back. No light, to keep it from taking over her completely.

These visions would not have concerned him in the past. The end of a girl, beautiful or otherwise, should not have registered anywhere within the realm of his thin conscience. It should not, by any standard that he knew, have drawn him to act. Yet, in that instant, Colton Black felt the hard twinges of concern arcing through his dark heart. The moment her back bowed his restraint snapped like wire that'd wound itself too tight and all at once the dark knots twisting within him uncoiled and leapt. It exploded from him. A detonation. A wave of force that leapt from his body beyond the measure of a mortal eye and struck that which would have claimed her. Shadow on Shadow, splashing in a wide arc above their heads like liquid and smoke. For a moment the two forces were separate, warring through momentum, but it was not long before oil and smoke began to meld. It twisted high over the pair, dropped snake-like appendages to the ground that slithered screeching away as it forged a lengthy slivered spear. Tar and oil and smoke, the man in Black looked on as his heart seized, and that dark mixture came in a flicker of movement and impaled his throat, filling his belly with its deathly taste and for the moment sparing Tenebrae. The cost was that his arms and legs began to seize and within his mind, within that which defined him, all went dark.

Something ripped, then, something with talons of ice gouged a chunk out of her soul. Something was torn from her, something important, when the fist of darkness was wrenched off her and then was forced to deal with a rival blackness pouring out from the conjurer. Tenebrae wouldn’t know what that thing she’d lost was, not now and not for a long time after, but it was worse than any wound for the sheer hurt she experienced while her limbs unknotted from their spasms and her spine unbent. Sucking breath in, grateful for it, Tene scrambled to gather her wits again, knowing death was here like a great wolf, slavering for blood and meat. Colton… she saw him, saw what had become of him, her body shaking like a shock victim, almost seizing like his own, but she would drag herself across the stone floor, disrupting those ritual lines, knocking braziers and candles over to reach his side. She did not feel it, when he hit her when a flailing limb, did not flinch from the revolting violation filling his flesh. Her fingers gripped his hair, one fist to each side of his head. Not for her sake. He would -not- die for her sake. She still wore the blood of the dragon they slew, flaked to rust on her face, when she bent to offer him salvation in the only way she could – with the sin-eater’s kiss.

The great invisible force, that which had at one point held back the foreign darkness and helped him contain his own, vanished. It died out like any man that he had ever known, quickly and without fanfare or expression. That was what he had learned of death. It was without theatrics. Death was as quick and as clean as a flame going out. His belly was swollen and full even as Tenebrae broke the conduit, leaving the shadow looming above to burst like an overfull balloon and splash pure black ichor around them like molten tar. It found crevices in stone and slopes that seemed not to truly be there, followed them to the walls and began sinking their way within. For Colton Black, freedom from one darkness meant captive to another. Her lips hovering above his own, unique in the experiences he had known until this grim moment. She drew from him. From his heart. Portions of what was his black came not slowly, but in a rush, surging from him to fill her lungs and choke her on it. His sins were innumerable and inhuman. They were the acts of a nightmare and monstrous beyond reason. Had he understood what she was doing, Colton Black would have let the life slip from him like sand through his fingers to keep her from it.

-- He isn’t human.—It wasn’t exactly a thought, more an instinctive level of knowledge spawned from the glimpses, the sensations, the empathetic absorption of his own reactions, while Colton Black’s sins were swallowed and swallowed, the tide rising like a ebon river bursting over its banks, threatening to sweep her away. Her hands were the floor now, supporting her body’s slight weight, her blood-crusted hair hanging in stiff lengths of black where its silk was smirched, her lips open – the flood having forced her mouth wide, as in a scream, and perhaps it was one. There was no light behind his darkness, was the other thing she realised, on that same subliminal level, only a dark that went on and on and… Children. Women. Men. Creatures. His cruelties, lusts, hatreds.. did he really hate? it didn’t taste like hate… his wrath, more wrath than anything so petty… his sins were grievous and legion, flavoured with every experiential abyss, and none of them tempered with guilt or conscience to aid in their assimilation. She could not process this. Her own darknesses, starved as they were, shrank from his as wolves from a raging lion. The little they managed to snap at swelled them to black flares that whipped in ropes around her, extruding from her eyes, nose, skin, her aura a dark sun with innumerable dark hands reaching, flailing to grasp… failing, then collapsing only to rise, refilled, reanimated. There was no end, No stopping this. No mercy….

“She’ll perish, you know,” said the thin man, leaning on his cane, a remarkable example of the cane-maker’s art, its ivory head carved into the likeness of a laughing goblin. “That, or she’ll find a way to use this .. little snack she’s taken, to end me. End … everything. All very chancey, don’t you think? O, what thrills and spills.” He turned his pale face to the witnesses, who would have become aware of Tene and the conjurer in the most abrupt and startling of ways when the curtaining spell collapsed, rendering them entirely visible. “But that’s not all. She’s made a crack in the egg, don’t you know?” He waved an elegant hand toward the well, from which erupted a flock of shadows, ragged-winged things that swooped about the space like insane, malevolent birds. “My thumbs are pricking, wot. Very bad business, to add to the mix.” His grin was sheepish. “But what to do? Stop her? Let her be consumed, go mad, let her heart stop? Save the world? End it? What say you - shall we roll the die? No pun intended.” His gaze snapped toward the vault of the ceiling, then down, to the west, to the east, back to the onlookers. “And of course, like ants to a picnic. Here comes something wicked, indeed … why… hello, Einar.”

And the thin man laughed, his eyes bursting like squashed black grapes, his face sagging into a horrible visage, melting like wax. From the well rose the Pool, Kurgans’s own filthy soul, swelling and looming, coalescing into a sharp-featured and entirely ebon face, which turned its blank, black gaze upon each occupant in turn, and then… opened its cavern of a mouth, from which flapped another stream of ghastly, winged shadows, and another, as if each burst was a syllable of each word intoned. “Hello, brother.” The voice was a rasp almost too low for the ear to hear it, “You’ve brought company.”