RP:The Murder of the Spider Queen

From HollowWiki

Part of the Venturil's Bane Arc


This is a Necromancer's Guild RP.


Wherever Kuzial Is

  • -- wherever Kuzial is, hatred and rage fall away like two halves of a torn shroud and there's a sensation of pressure on his chest --*


  • --- this no doubt is highly disturbing--*


  • ---abruptly, all he can think about is Tenebrae - how lovely she is, how clever - what a woman! how he adores her, with all of his being! his heart swells like a tsunami of devotion!---*


  • ---this is even more disturbing---*


  • ---now it's all hilarious, he can't help laughing - and look, here's his hatred and rage flooding back, like old friends he’d lost and then found again!---*


  • ---clearly, someone is messing with him! but who? - he smirks - no! it's not funny! why is he smirking like that, then?! with that damnable, smarmy 'I always win, I know things that you don't know, and you so want me, don't you' smirk...it reminds him of… of…---*


Kuzial shouted, "I am going to cut your stupid head... well maybe... it is pretty... though scary... and hahahaha... and Tenebrae!" *indecipherable screaming mumbling*


Some Time, Later: at the Thorne Estate, Vailkrin

Kuzial has been in an unpredictable mood the last few days. Or rather, beyond the predictions of him, but predicted entirely by the woman who takes as much pleasure tormenting him as he does she. So the dark elf patron wasn't surprised... well, he was surprised, but it was hardly an emotion he usually felt. She was to blame. So following the whispering voices inside that speak to him of where she is, he stalks through the streets of perpetual darkness like a shadow. Usually he'd kill a few undead just to piss off the authorities, or to sate his constant blood-lust. But he refuses to; unsure whether or not his desire to tear flesh apart is from within or caused by the necromancer. To her gates he eventually makes his way, and like last time he simply levitates over them, ignoring their protest at not having someone to... play with. He walks up to her door while pulling out his heavy morningstar - he'd smash the wood to smithereens... but even this small pleasure is robbed from him. For they open on silent hinges and allow him entrance. The weapon is slammed back into the loop on his belt and he enters silently. The usual guardians, either at the will of Tenebrae, or out of intelligent fear, leave him be. So he can stalk without hassle through the house, down past the cellar, through the doom and gloom which resides beneath this odious manse, until he enters her dungeon. Here, he pauses. A student of torture and pain since before he could talk, he takes a certain obscure pride in the many devices of agony which rest about the room. He briefly ponders using more than one of them on the woman who has such control over him, something which causes his mood to briefly lift, before he speaks out in his euphonious voice, "I am not impressed." The words are rich in a certain ironic tone, but that is all he would say.


Tenebrae offered him -that- smirk, "Oh, trust me - I could have left a far greater impression on you, Patron..." A flash of bright metal in her hands - nothing more than a tulip wrought in steel, it would seem, though Kuzial may recognise a chokepear when he saw one - as the Necromancer ticked her heels over the stone, coming to rest on the corner of that immaculate rack. She nodded toward a chair, somewhat more appropriate than the last she'd offered him. It was beautifully carven from some kind of dark substance, though the wrist, ankle and neck-straps detracted somewhat from the flow of its design. "Do have a seat." The chokepear blossomed at the request of her nimble fingers, and she laid it down beside her. "I'm in the mood for a chat."


Kuzial offers her -that- scowl straight back. There is a wealth of threat in the single look, though she'd be wise enough to realize it's a treasure made only of fool's gold. He wasn't ready yet to defy the woman. He eyes for a moment the chokepear - he knew it well enough, it was one of his more favoured means of torture - but he doesn't speak of it. Instead he shifts his gaze to the chair, before lofting a single white eyebrow. "I suppose it is better than the last... but if those shackles should happen to get a mind of their own and incarcerate me upon it, I'll tear my own arms off and use the stumps to beat you to death." He flashes her a grin, it isn't entirely pleasant, before he walks over and drops easily into the chair after spending just a moment adjusting his many weapons. "A chat?" Last time they had one of those, a lot of people died.


Tene nodded. "It's plain that you got my.. message." Her turn to grin, and there was a deal more humour in her own than had been in Kuzial's. Tene's pale green gaze flitted over those straps briefly - perhaps distracting herself, momentarily. With a soft cough, she continued: "Today, we hunt again. This time for your armour. I don't think I need to demonstrate much further as to why you'll need it." Smug, thy name is...well, it's obvious, presently. "When you have your own thralls, that is how you'll control them. We all share a certain... connection. It can be wonderful, and it can be.. " her smirk became wan, and she shrugged. "A weapon, a powerful one. But let's not rush off, Stavret, to the kill just yet. Like I said, it's time for a chat. And I want to ask you this: what are you, what would you be, without your rage, your hatreds, all that.. " she waved her moon-hued hand, as if spinning the precise term from the air, "Darkness?”


Kuzial snaps back a quick response to her first words, "A letter would have done the same job." But the words are more muttered than vehement, as he listens to the rest of what she says. He doesn't immediately respond to those words - they caught him a bit off guard. The hunting he had expected, and he knew exactly what he wanted to seek... a monster within the Underdark proper. A great spider worshipped above all others in Trist'Oth. It would be... fitting. But of that he would not yet speak, instead when his words come they address the last of her own.. "What would I be? Another idiot like the rest of those morons who plague the surface, too afraid to kill, too scared to destroy those unworthy; running around hugging trees like some stupid druid, or sitting in some tower like the idiotic mages too afraid of death to live their lives... And though I do not want to ask this question, I must: Why do you ask? You are powerful, you have.. control for now. But if you seek to remove my rage, you will find yourself drowning in it." He doesn't entirely believe those last words, but he speaks them regardless.


Tenebrae tried, and mostly succeeded in, masking her vast amusement at this outburst from the drow, and shivered as though his threat was sharp-tipped fingers dragging along the course of her spine. Once more, she seemed slightly distracted.. but quickly re-focussed that pale gaze on Kuzial's singular, scarlet eye. "Wrong," she replied softly. "This might have been a truth, before you gained the symbiote. It is no longer so." Her words were delicate, deliberately pitched thus. "You are Empusai now. We were created, for a purpose." One white hand rose, to brush the diadem on her brow. Apparently changing topic for a time, she went on: "You'll recall the Haruspex... Leifong... perhaps. Mouthy, not a lot of flesh.. Anyway. I learned a great deal from observing his .. experiments. One of those lessons concerned the functions of the brain. And so, I have reached something of an understanding as to why the symbiote joins us at the back of our heads and not.." she tapped the Eye, and lowered her hand. "For that is where the petty darknesses we indulge in choose to dwell. They are the first to be subsumed, used, by our higher nature, when we emerge from the vats." Sensing she was drifting from her point, the Necromancer continued, "Without your passions, you would be Empusai. With them, you are Empusai. It doesn't matter. The purpose for which our kind were conceived does not cling to evil. The God of Death has no interest in our little peccadilloes at all. And while his servant, the first of us, allowed for those - he also knew that while they are strengths, they may also become weaknesses." Tene smiled, almost fondly, and glanced around the room, "Never fear, Kuzial. I enjoy your darknesses, very much so. I would never seek to take them from you - for then, you would not be .. Stavret-flavoured.. any more."


Kuzial snarls as the anger they speak of begins to grow in vehemence within his mind. "I am not wrong." Ignoring her desire for him to sit, he stands and takes a step towards her. His fists clench at his side, though he doesn't grasp the hilt of the E' et-Nilah Blade, as is usual when his mood is most foul. Instead he speaks in a voice which is sibilant and cold, a twist from the usual lyrical tones which come from the powerful patron. "I care nothing for the God of Death! I care nothing for any Gods, any Immortals or Ascended. They sit upon lofty thrones never realizing their power is a lie. They are strong only in the minds of those who worship them... they are strong in the minds of fools!" Were he able to, he might have taken another step closer to Tenebrae, then. Though something... something felt upon the air stops his angry advance. "There is no evil in my anger, nor my cruelty, nor my hatred. There is no weakness in these things. You do not understand, lady of darkness, for you have spent too long flirting with the lines between life and death; between sentient and slaves, light and darkness. You do not understand what life is anymore... perhaps you never did. Life is destruction and pain... and that is what I excel at. This... symbiote within me... this Empusai I have become... the things that which I am understand the cause of my rage... it accepts it more than ancient teachings or senile, stupid gods. There is a strength in this hate. Lady Tenebrae. Perhaps you gaze too far forward to see the truth that stands before you. You see a weakness where there is none, because you cannot understand it."


Tenebrae slid her rump off the rack, her heels hitting the stone below with a sharp 'clack!' and then removed the space between herself and the drow with a few short, ticking steps. The look in her eyes, as she peered into Stavret's own, was not amused at his rebuttal of her words. "So delicious..." she breathed, as though his ranting had proved some kind of point to her. "Perhaps you are right, Kuzial, about me seeing too far ahead for what's before my face." That cool gaze shifted its attention from one aspect of his beauty to another, "I have seen so many things, lately. I have seen how I am to..." die, she almost said, and didn't. ".. end. I think you'll find it.. fitting." By now, she was staring right into his eye again, and smiled a broader smile, sharp as a shark's perpetual hunger, and her armour's plating shifted ever so slightly. "Let's get about it, shall we?"


Kuzial spends a long moment staring at Tenebrae, before he shrugs in a languid gesture. He could feel her brief anger at his rebuttal, and that caused his own to begin to fade; there is no salve to a dark elf's anger stronger than shifting it to another. "I do hope it is at my hands," your end, he doesn't say, "for it would be fitting repayment indeed." He offers her a crooked smirk that flashes his bone-white teeth against the contrast of his ebon lips, before he shrugs again. "Your end, when it comes, will not be dictated by fate, Tenebrae. If you accept what you have seen, then it will come to be. But if you refuse to be a slave to the whims of capricious designs, you will forever be strong." He nods his head - it is a belief he needed to believe in. Before he moves a shade to the side, "I am ready to hunt... to the Underdark we will go, lady of darkness. But not through Trist'Oth. We will go through the caverns of Xalious... I do not think you and I can travel through the city of dark elves without attracting too much attention... too much has changed since we last did."


Tenebrae lashed a hand out, though its palm would land gently on the drow's cheek, the armour on it peeling back so the pad of a smooth, white thumb was all that brushed his lips, the briefest touch. Then the hand's forefinger pointed to the runes painted in scarlet configurations upon the far wall of that oddly immaculate torture-house. "Or we could take the short-cut?" There were advantages to having a headful of ancient, forbidden knowledge, said this particular smug smirk. "I don't mind which, though. Whatever makes you.. happy." She grinned, because she just so loved pushing Kuzial's many buttons. Though it was doubtful she was anywhere near having discovered all of them... yet.


Kuzial spends a long moment silently staring at Tenebrae, before he flashes her a very rare smile that is not drowning in cruelty or hate. Usually knowing someone could make their way into Trist'Oth would fill him with anger, but from Tenebrae... he can accept it. "I am not surprised." Though, unspoken were the words 'I am not angry that I am surprised.'. She might read as much from his look, and from the smirk he wears right after - one which is a mirror of her own, and filled with as much feral hunger for the hunt... be it beasts, or hunting ways of infuriating Kuzial. "Lead on, then."


Tenebrae's mask of calm slipped a little, at the moment Kuzial smiled, revealing an expression that may be yet another thing about her that Kuzial would not yet fully understand. Or probably care to. But it was the merest flicker, before she too smiled, her own more wicked, and turned for the rune-fed stone. "Put your palms against the wall.. here.. and here..." she demonstrated, and then took her own position. "We'll emerge not far from your House." Tene turned aside, and then back to the runes. "The method of activating this portal is a secret, Stavret, and I shall never reveal it to you.. willingly." With that, she uttered a few ugly phrases, the wall alit with a somber, red glow and then they were falling...or so it would feel to the Patron.


Kuzial is a master of reading the subtle changes in expression, a skill all dark elf excelled at. Yet, the brief look she briefly gave him... he doesn't think he wants to understand it. There is a lot about the necromancer which is like that; sides to her he'd rather not understand, facets of who she is which are best left in the darkened shadows of her soul. So without betraying anything on his face, not that she needed to read that to understand him, he nods and follows her instruction. He is about to utter words about how she would tell him if he wanted, or perhaps she would become a more permanent resident of this room, before the world falls all around him. Or perhaps rather, he falls through it; shifting down through the earth like a droplet of water seeking means through the stone to drip into a pool beneath the earth. He feels faintly nauseated by the experience, but he trusted Tenebrae enough that he doesn't really think they'd appear in the Underdark in the middle of some stone... he merely lets himself fall until again his feet can feel the solid earth beneath him...


In a Long-wide Corridor, the Underdark

Tenebrae stumbled out of the portal, its glow fading behind her to leave only the faintest traces of etched, spiked sigils on that dark stone, at the far end of a shallow recess once occupied by some of the Underdark's delightful wildlife. Perhaps Kuzial's boots would crunch on the bones of its remains.. Shaking herself, Tene smoothed her hands over her armour, merely from habit, and said, "...indeed, one would have to torture it from me." The tone was cloyingly faux-innocent, and almost inaudible. In fact, the bulk of her nefarious meaning would be transmitted directly to the drow's nervous system.


Kuzial spits onto the bones of whatever creature his boots did crunch upon, before he shifts his head to the side and glares at Tenebrae, "I would say don't tempt me... but I don't think it'd quite have the right effect on you." His voice is quiet, though; there is a shift in Kuzial which happens when he stalks the Underdark, and even feeling sick from the portal, it isn't a veil he would ever let slip. He stands a little lower, his hands rest closer to his blades... he appears like he's ready to tear apart anything which comes close... he is the hunter down here amongst a bubbling pool of deadly creatures... he was home.


Tenebrae had travelled through these dank, dark reaches often enough that she knew silence was a good friend, here, and so quickly adopted it. There was only the faintest hiss of chitin as her gauntlets closed about her hands and extended into the wicked array of knives that her fingers now became. This place... The part of Tenebrae that jolly well -ought- to have born a drow breathed the chill of it, the inherent danger present, and had a tiny moment of sheer happiness. Here, Kuzial reigned and even Lady Darkness herself had to acknowledge his supremacy. So she would wait, almost obediently, for him to take the lead.


Kuzial does not move for a long moment. There was great pride in the dark elf, but despite the many quiet whispers which speak of his lack of sanity, ones never spoken anywhere near him, he is far too intelligent to merely begin wandering deeper until the lingering sensations from the portal has passed. He was unused to such travel, and so it took a while for his body, already going through many changes, to return to its normal state. When finally ready, he flashes Tenebrae a hidden smile in the darkness, before he begins to move. He shifts through the dark passages in a silence so complete that even the few drow who stand patrol this far down never once realize death was so close to them. He leads Tenebrae further through the caverns, through the eternal darkness which houses creatures twisted by constant shadow, pushing both himself at the necromancer through a quick pace until they reach the end of Trist'Oth's true boundaries. The city itself is long behind them, but the drow's insidious influence reaches far beyond the walls which protect them. At the entrance to the Dead Caves he pauses, before moving his mouth so close to Tenebrae's ear she would feel his cold breath brushing across her flesh. "I have wondered, lady of darkness," He does entwine a certain ironic tone to that name; it's fitting here, "what would happen if we encounter the mind flayers below. They can destroy a single drow... but we are far from that now... perhaps we should find out?" Considering the last time they came here, Kuzial droned on for a long time about avoiding the pernicious mind flayers... perhaps that small question would speak much larger about his growing confidence within his new self.


Without the benefit of a semi-sentient chitin layer to protect him from it, Tenebrae's answer would come as a vicarious thrill pulsing at the base of Kuzial's spine - the peculiar empathy only shared between an Empusai and its vat-spawn. Tenebrae, of course, was a great reader of secret things hidden in the far corners of secret places, and with her curiosity fuelled by Kuzial’s warnings had sought to learn of the mind-flayers to that small degree available to surface dwellers. She knew they feasted on living minds... and had some trouble with those further from a state of true vitality. Too, she had read of their viciousness, strength, their foul manner of feeding (though her own was nearly as bad, these days.. it was the whole 'eating your brain' thing that disturbed her...). The Necromancer turned her face so that her lips were not far from Kuzial's own, and her slightly minty breath cooled them further still when she whispered, "You really know how to show a girl a good time, don't you, Stavret?" And, of course, she meant every word of it.


In the Dead Caves

Kuzial felt that thrill pulsing down his spine, knowing its source. It was a vivid reminder the true reason they were down here, and despite his question, he would keep that thought in mind. Armour first. Fun second. He doesn't even hide the fact that if the illithids prove deadly, he'll push Tenebrae in front of them and run away, knowing that she would find the same dark amusement in the thought as he would. "Let us first find Tria'liathal..." the name which loosely translates into 'That which stands chosen above my children', "she will be my armour... then we can stalk those creatures most foul." And so after just a brief pause in which she could sense his dark smirk rather than see it, he would turn again and begin to move. They leave the first cavern, and enter into a huge cavernous opening deep beneath the earth. The silence is thick upon the musty air; it is ripe with the eyes of a thousand patient hunters, a thousand hungry souls. The ceiling of the cavern rests high above; huge stalactites which hang like the fangs of a foul beast seem almost tenuously placed above them, ready to crush the fools below for their arrogance in coming to this devilish place. Stalagmites rise up in the darkness, completing the look; the whole place seeming like the maw of a gigantic dragon, and seeming just as hungry as such a beast would be. Kuzial feels a thrill of anticipation as he stalks forward, moving in complete silence as he enters the true darkness below... there was so much death lurking close, the faintest mistake could well destroy them both. It is this the dark elf thrives upon. He moves them in shadows amongst shadows, pausing now and again to let his keen hearing pick up anything. But no noises do come. Perhaps some of the creatures understood true hunters walk amongst them this day, or perhaps it’s the stench of death which comes from them. Either way, Kuzial carries onwards, pausing when he reaches a cave which seems to descend downwards even further into Hollow's dark centre. There he pauses, and thinks as clearly as he can to his partner in this hunt that this is where the beast he seeks lives. Deep down this cave, past her hungry children; spiders almost as big as Tenebrae and Kuzial. Beyond the layers of webbing which would hinder them, trap them, make them nothing more than food for the hungry beasts below. And at its end, the true target of Kuzial's hunt. The spider... she is huge. A bulbous mass of death and terror which sits upon a web made of shimering hues lost in the darkness below, but granted their strength from the lingering favour of the Spider Goddess herself. Many priestesses have come here, though few do now. Many drow males have been dragged here, forced to become food for her children - she plants her eggs within the drow, and the young spiders are born into a living host... until they eat away his insides... Tenebrae may enjoy that brief thought, before Kuzial steels his resolve and asks without asking, "Do you wish to lead? Perhaps your magic would be better aid than my swords... they can protect us from behind better than cutting through the webbings of the spiders..."


Tenebrae traversed this deeper path as she had the rest of the caverns so far - carefully, in silence, and with her every nerve standing on end. Too well she recalled their former journeys, and while the Necromancer treasured those memories as a dragon does gold, she was not about to let her wonderment and joy make her slip up and become easy prey. Her already well-honed paranoia bloomed into a subtle web of perception which fanned out around her - her pointed ears flinched at every limestone drip, every scrape made by the Underdark's pale, blind versions of vermin. It was Stavret's turn to be smug now, and even if he wasn't (which she doubted, especially as her mind filled with images of mummified bodies laden with eggs) she thought he deserved to be, an idea that rankled moreso with every step they took toward the lower reaches. What she felt was not exactly fear - that emotion was not something an Empusai entertains easily. But the thrill of danger.. oh, she lived for it. Hopefully wouldn't die for it, just yet, was her next wry thought, and she shot Kuzial a look almost as dark as the land itself, once they reached the webby caves he'd been heading for. Go first? Really? Well, she would, then... With a nod, Tenebrae agreed. Thankfully, her vision was spectacular, and far moreso than it had been last she was here. Glancing about, though, even she had to squint to make out a path through the sticky traps where infant arachnids gnawed and sucked on the bodies of prior victims. Thick blobs of web perhaps contained eggs.. so many eggs.. Tene crept on, on the balls of her feet so her heels made not a sound, and paused. In silence, she summoned the dark - it might seem redundant to the point of funny down here.. but shadows do more than simply exist as darkness, when summoned by a Necromancer of power. These would render the pair free of scent, sound, muffling the fact of their existence while the livelier of them thronged into a density capable of forging Kuzial and Tene a path - cleverly, keeping the thread-traps taught and motionless even while parting them like veils.. Her widened eyes narrowed in one more glance back to Kuzial. If she was just the bait, here, he'd pay for it and pay.. that is, if there was enough left of her after this day to exact any kind of vengeance from him, at all.


When the last of those veils parted, Tenebrae could not help the gasp that drew cold air over parted lips. Even she, mother of protoflesh monsters, had not imagined the reality of coming face-to-face with the mighty Tria'liathal, whose legend had even reached the surface albeit under a different name. Ancient and colossal, fat on the many murderous dinners she'd enjoyed in all her many centuries, the Grand-dam of the Underdark's eight-legged horrors had all eight eyes fixed ahead... In the incredibly dim glow of the fungus growing on the dry carcasses of the spider's last few meals, that multi-angled gaze glittered. Tenebrae's gasp turned to a word - a garden variety cuss-word as something hit in her the back, forcing her to stumble closer to the spider - and then a string of thick syllables, each a razor of sound in itself, which wrenched the dark off the cavern walls and made it obey... Clots of it drew about the monster's relatively spindly legs, while the husks of her dinners clattered in a bony chorus, death-lances and black-bladed swords joining the din as those dead former victims stirred under Tenebrae's necromantic command. The creature might surge forward to snap up this offering, but it would come slowly and with a fearless, fleshless throng of spike-wielding dead between Tria'liathal and the two monsters who did not call these deep caverns home.


Tenebrae could have sworn she’d heard the words ‘Trust me’. Right before she was shoved into the path of almost certain death... but was too busy, presently, to think about the possible implications of that.


Kuzial follows in a silence as deep as the grave behind Tenebrae... well, as deep as a grave that is far away from the master necromancer, that is - around her, the dead are never truly quiet. He senses more than sees her enjoyment of this place, and he would nod his head in appreciation that she understood his silence, if he cared enough to give her praise. She would probably know anyway. It is part of the reason he likes this woman, and also part of the reason why he hates her. Though, those two emotions shift quickly amongst the dark elf. He shakes his head, then; he must concentrate entirely on what they do. It was her insidious influence... this armour couldn't come quick enough. The darkness she conjures, as deep as any globe he could, and far more potent a resource than simply robbing the site from a victim, is met with another sense of appreciation. He watches those webs be severed, yet held taught. It was clever; far better than him hacking his way through. In her wake he follows, occasionally ending the life of a spider which crawls from behind, eight eyes peering into the shadows to see what has disturbed it... curious more than cautious they are, for her preparations mean they are unlike the usual predators which come this way. Until the two come into an opening... and there, resting upon her web is the bloated spider. Only then does Kuzial disrupt the silence by whispering into Tenebrae's ear, "Trust me." With those words out, Kuzial erupts into motion: He pushes Tenebrae from behind, sending her towards the webbing which contains Tria'liathal, even as he draws forth the E' et-Nilah Blade. Focusing on the powerful soul-stone he wears, he conjours flames behind them both, which light up the room in advancing series of scarlet hues; blocking the only exit, stopping the children of the spider from entering. He needed the time to do this, which might explain why Tenebrae was shoved at the big spider. But it also spoke of a trust between them - he thought she would be strong enough to defend herself, long enough for Kuzial to continue what he seeks to do. With the weapon in hand, he begins to move around the outside of the cavern, he intended to get beneath the spider and stab it with his sword, before he realizes he isn't sure what he must do. He should have spoken beforehand about the process, so he begins to create a distraction for the beast - giving Tenebrae time to answer his questions, "Do I kill it?! Do I feast upon it? Quickly, Tenebrae!" Knowing she might well be in danger, he begins to cut open the web-encased drow which rest in death around the room, spilling baby spiders onto the floor. In true blasphemy against Astrala, he squishes them as loud as he can, creating further distraction for the chosen of the Spider Queen's beasts... but they don't have much time. The fires he created are already flickering lower, and if this business isn't done before they fade, the two would find the room drowning in spiders... a rather poor end to the pair of vicious vampires, that would be...


Tene's boots were momentarily rendered unsteady footing, what with the clotted flesh of infant spiders stuck to their heels - she was forced to stomp the fleshy impediments off, freeing her to kick yet more of them to death, though those dying drow-summoned flames revealed still more crawling rapidly toward their progenitor from the cave beyond, a swarm of death on innumerable legs with bodies that popped like hideous, black kernels of corn on reaching the fires. But even as a dozen died, a dozen more, a hundred more took their place and soon their charred remains were assisting the magic to falter as they smothered fires and formed smouldering bridges to that inner cave where… "Oh my…" God, she thought, not so much appealing to whatever damn god slithered the Underdark these days, as the God of Death whose mark she bore on her brow… While Kuzial manoeuvred around that space, his intent clear to her, she shouted, "Yes! I mean.. yes, kill it!" and hopefully those risen corpses and leg-tangling shadows would offer the drow a little help in that task. The Necromancer herself took an opposite but equal path, circling the cave back toward that many-legged tide that now threatened to overwhelm them. Just as well vampires don't need breath, she thought… and began to add her own pyrumbral flames to the dying glower of Kuzial's.


Kuzial flashes a grin at Tenebrae through the flickering flames, through the sounds of scuttling legs and squished spiders. There is a tangible sense of death bearing down upon them both, yet he cannot help but smile. She spoke the words he longed for her to speak... kill it. Twisting himself down, he grabs the legs of one of her risen creatures, before hurling it at the gigantic spider. Babies pour from the flying corpse like confetti over a battle-weary parade of victors, but Kuzial wades through them like a man quite literally possessed. The shadows she created are far more visible now, and using one which helps hold down a leg of the spider, which has begun to emit an almost intelligent scream of terror, he springboards himself up. He is careful not to touch any of the webbing as he twists in mid-air, turning so he lands upon the bulbous back of the grotesque Tria'liathal. She, the huge spider, had just finished tearing apart the corpse-made-distraction, and before it can realize its mistake, Kuzial is upon it. His weapon is shifted so he grips it like a huge dagger, and he screams into the silent tunnels of the Dead Caves, "Take this, you eight legged bitch! You and your damned goddess!" His hatred for the spider queen is still intense, despite her being locked away from the priestesses, and he puts all of that anger, all of that hatred and rage into one vicious strike. The sword doesn't pierce the bulbous back of the ebon spider, instead it thrusts into its very center... where all the legs connect, where the head attaches to its over-large body. He drives it down with every ounce of hatred he has and is covered in mere moments by disgusting fluid which erupts from the gigantic spider like a putrid fountain. Covered in the slimy substance, he cannot yet see Tenebrae's fate... but the hideous death screams of the spider means he simply doesn't care... this was vengeance, and damn it all to hell, he was going to enjoy it...


Tenebrae ‘enjoyed’ a great big splash of putrid ichors to the back of her head - it was by the grace of one God or another that she hadn't picked that very moment to turn around and check on Kuzial's own progress. With a cry and a shudder - that stuff was in her hair, dammit! - she sought within herself the will to calm the dark waters of her mind, where power lay coiled like a hungry serpent. Already cold, the cavern grew colder still; black fires and red guttered down to nearly nothing, as Tenebrae sucked at the magic, drawing it to herself, forging from it a new weapon against the oncoming river of arachnid peril.. The shadows that had flanked the path of the hunters on their way in grew dense as two slabs of obsidian. Gritting her teeth with the effort of it, Tene willed the two sides to smash together, part and smash together again - a scylla of darkness summoned to destroy the bulk of the horde, though many still would clamber over the paste made of their siblings. Briefly, Tene wondered where the hell Vakmatharas was when she needed that damn-it-all Eye to open and burn the things all to hell. But it was a fleeting disappointment; her clawed hands flailed like scythes at the ones descending from overhead, her sharp heels tapping sudden death on the heads of the ones below .. and the obedient servants of the Shadow-Queen took toll after toll, until the tide at least ran low to a trickle...


As beleaguered as she was by the spider's many children, Tene had still managed to flash a sharp-toothed grin at the sound of Kuzial’s victory-cry.


Kuzial stayed on the thrashing back of the huge spider until at last a final shudder echoed through its hairy body. It sags then upon the web it made, and the shimmering hues which once filled the sticky substance with life, fade until they begin to break. The snaps are quiet, but still Kuzial is ready when at last it gives way. Like a master horseman Kuzial rides Tria'liathal down until it thuds onto the ground. He leaps off its back when the legs curl inwards, and lands gracefully beside Tenebrae. It is there he watches her slay the smaller spiders with a grisly display of her necromantic strength. He is impressed again at her power, so much so he even uses the edge of his piwifwi to wipe some of the sickly fluid off her hair, and even flick a spider or two from her back as she kills the final few with her vicious heels. He doesn't do a great job of cleaning her up, considering he has a ton of the stuff on him, too, but when at last the tunnel seems quiet - the remaining spiders having fled off with a few of the egg sacs, to make a new nest for themselves somewhere, hoping in their animalistic minds that a queen spider will be amongst the young - Kuzial speaks again. "You do a good job at reminding me why I am reluctant at times to piss you off." That's not quite true, but it's pretty close to a compliment, and much more than most ever get. The drow, despite the kill and the joy it caused, seems tired as he speaks again, as if it took more out of him than merely physical power. "What... what now, Tenebrae?" He moves, then, to regard the corpse of the gigantic spider, to ensure she too can see it resting there in death. "And if you bring it back to life to spite me, help me Gods in Hell, I'll cut your damn head off!" He offers her a smirk at that, though it's lacking in part his usual heat.


Tenebrae blinked, envisioning her own severed head creeping through the darkness on ganglion-born tentacles, perhaps to lurk under Kuzial’s bed in anticipation of biting him hard on the ankle.. Dark humour, but it drew her out of the kill-space her being was wholly engaged in at that time. "A good hunt, Stavret, and fine material for your armour. But this.. was not me being pissed off.. love." The last word was a dagger, though not as sharp as it might have been, considering Kuzial had at least attempted to help remove some of that awful.. stuff.. from her hair. Savaging a slow-moving escapee with her boot, Tene turned to view the drow's dead quarry, and the grim line of her lips defrosted into a softer expression. "We need to get that back to my cellar." Where Tene would.. okay, she would bring it back to life. But she wouldn't tell Kuzial that, not now. "I can have my servants come down to fetch it, though.." a far better option than the danger of dragging the nasty, heavy thing back to that portal. "If we hide the entrance to this cave, it ought to be safe enough for a short time, yes? Because I -really- need a bath, Kuzial." Her slightly wrinkled nose, turned up with the bat-like legacy of her Empusai forebears, wrinkled further still, the more beautiful aspect of her lost in the heat of the fight. "…if I now smell as bad as that carcass does..." her lips thinned again, "And I do, don't I."


Kuzial may just have picked up certain aspects of her own dark humour, one which fits so well with his own. For the smirk he wears grows a little bigger, a little more natural upon his ebon face. And he whispers, "I'll sleep with my boots on." A quick dark wink and he turns to regard his latest kill. He nods his head in acceptance of her words - it was a clean kill, and a quick one - but these two are beyond the normal hunters which come here. Beyond almost any who stalk this world, be it above the surface or below. He expected no less from them both, though he did much enjoy slaying beside this mistress of death. He would have to do it more often - elves and spiders sent to the grave, while Kuzial and Tenebrae laugh from above. Life, or rather a lack of it, didn't get too much better than that. To the rest of her words, he nods. "Even in death, few will come to this cave. Only the bravest of hunters... and they would not be attracted by its stench. If your... servants," he didn't want to ask what they were, "come quickly, they will be fine... but leave it too long and something will come devour it. Food is too scarce down here, and even protected, it will not last long." He nods his head absently at that, before drawing in a breath through his nose - something he immediately regrets. "And yes, we do need a bath. I thought those stinking vats smelled bad... but it was a bouquet of blood and agony compared to us now... and hunting further while smelling like this would be foolish - we'll attract the scavengers who slither about for easy meat. Not that we couldn't handle them." He grins again at that.


The Necromancer seemed far happier at the news that a bath was indeed imminent - vanity and pride had long ago collided in that woman to create a whole new level of narcissism - and she poked Kuzial almost gently in his ichor-covered chest, returning a quiet reply to his whisper, "There’s a variety of things I think you should more often do with your boots on.. “ Then, with a little more volume: “And hey, you don't smell so good, yourself." Though in truth, they'd both be hard pressed to smell anything now, in the cloying fog of acrid spider-ash and smoke filling that confined space. She peered through the smoke toward the spider-carcass again, though it was something else she sought - amid the utter wreckage of bone, dead spider-babies and stinking fluids littering the aftermath, a single drow-carcass remained intact enough to suffice for simple sentry duty. Combined with the shadows she'd used to squash the infant horde it would make an adequate short-term guardian for the drow’s horrible trophy. Even after battle, it took her only moments to work the necessary spells. This done, she looked to Kuzial again. "I will need you there, too, later, for the armour’s creation – but first.. My place? Or dare we take a dip in the local hot springs?"


Kuzial watches the corpse be given unlife by Tenebrae, and were he anything close to being human, he'd almost feel sorry for it. Tortured to death painfully by the spider, now forced to stand sentry and act as its protector. But Kuzial isn't at all touched by this, beyond smiling at the irony of such a fate - one deserved, for being too weak to stand up to those who sought his death. "As much as I enjoy these caverns more than the open air of the surface, I think it would be best to return to your home. The noise we made while killing this beast," he says we, but he really means I, "as well as the stench of death... it would attract too many things, awaken too many beasts best left sleeping. Plus," He moves forward, then. His single eye close to her, though not looking at the artifact she wears on her forehead, "I want to give it time to settle, for I wish to hunt those creatures which bring such fear in my people. You have given me many gifts, lady of darkness," he looks almost like he will kiss her, though the sticky ichor on his face isn't exactly inviting. Instead, he carries on, "I would like to give you a mind-flayer or two in return... just to watch what you do to the surface idiots with one of those. There are no creatures like them in all the world, lady Tenebrae..." He flashes a crooked grin, then. "It would please me to see you use one to create terror and death upon the surface. As I am sure it would please you, also."


Tene’s face, ichor notwithstanding, bore a look Kuzial would know all too well... "Oh, it would, Patron, bring me great pleasure indeed." She grinned in return, and nudged the drow toward the cavern's exit, "Come on, then. The creatures at my manse won't mind a bit what sort of noise we make.." Though this was not precisely a fact - for the ones with capacity for hearing would be clamping their appendages down over their ears quite hard by the time the Empusai pair were done bathing. Amid perfumed suds, Tenebrae will sooner or later explain to Kuzial the process by which his new armour would be forged and what to expect from that, as well as exacting from him the details of what shape he'd like the armour to take when it eventually covered his dark-skinned frame.


Kuzial takes that nudge with a wry grin on his face, before he turns and prepares to walk out. The satisfaction he feels when boots met the burned husks of many spiders with delightful 'crunches' causes a twisted smile to remain on his lips, even as the two weave their way out of the tangled mess of webbing remnants and corpses. At the entrance to the cave, Kuzial pauses, before he nods his head. The commotion they made didn't attract a thousand predators, as he thought, instead it sent them all scurrying back to their homes; primal fear overwhelming hunger. It was as it should be when two masters of their craft - one a bringer of death, the other one who blurs its lines so wonderfully well - stalk the dark caverns beneath Trist'Oth. Quickly they leave the darkness below, exchanging it in the same fashion the entered for the darkness of Tenebrae's home. He leaves the necromancer to sort out her servants, even as he prepares two baths. Not one for each, rather one to clean the filth of spider death from their bodies... the other... that would be used for many things... things which cause the beasts and creations which guard her home to shudder... the master of the home was back... it was time for her to celebrate another victory...