RP:The Perils of Undeath

From HollowWiki

Summary: Johnny encounters the aftermath of a graveyard battle, and a mysterious undead woman unleashes her rage on the recently turned vampire Pilar.

In the Graveyard of Vailkrin

Amabella took a few moments break from cleaning up the notable destruction caused by last night's conflict. Scorch marks littered the area in odd patterns, wild scars cut deeply through the earth over the main pathway of the graveyard, remnants of caskets littered the site, and burnt corpses could be found all over the place. A few humanoid skeletons were at work cleaning up the bodies while their master sat back and watched for awhile. The woman was much shorter than her entourage, and was dressed in something other than baggy robes for a change, with her hair tied up in lazy pigtails. Amabella rested back against a headstone, content to leave whatever labour to her minions for now.

Johnny stops in his tracks as he spots skeletons walking around. Trixie, the tiny baby unicorn held in his arms, hides her face in fear. Johnny assesses the situation. Skeletons, seemingly working, not wreaking havoc. Someone must be in charge. He sweeps the graveyard, looking for something with flesh on its bones. There she is, resting against a headstone. After all this, he finally realizes what it is they are cleaning. Burnt corpses? This place is a wreck. Shaking his head, he takes a few steps toward the woman to make his presence known. "Excuse me, Miss..." He can't think of anything else to say but "What happened here?"

Amabella sighed at the sound and sight of company. Hopefully this time there wouldn't be so many interruptions... Amabella raised a brow when she noticed the creature in Johnny's arms. The feeling it gave her was... unsettling, to say the least, though it wasn't clear who was more disturbed by the other. "Some lightning-mage tore up the place when I was, um-- working, yes," Amabella explained. Her voice was something short of rusty nails scraping against another metal or stone, though thankfully low in volume. Amabella's weariness showed despite being an undead. One can only imagine how much more damage had been done here the night before.

Johnny stops, still looking around at the destruction. "A lightning mage?" She doesn't sound entirely sincere, but with no other reason to doubt her, he carries on. "I wonder what could have made someone do this." A skeleton crossing his path makes him tense up a bit. "These... Are yours, yes?"

Amabella scratched the back of her head when regarding her necromantic slaves. "Sadly. Yeah, these good-for-nothings are mine-- HEY!" the woman yelled over to one of her servants who just dropped a coffin onto the ground, its lid flinging open and contents spilling out onto the ground in loud crashes. Instead of a cadaver being inside as one would expect to be in a coffin, a number of glass and clay containers fell out. Some survived the accident while most of them smashed open on the stone below. Pickled organs, caustic chemicals, and other strange mixtures splashed out onto the surrounding area. The collective stench would be overwhelming for anyone with even the dullest senses, but Amabella seemed not to be bothered despite her relative closeness to it. "Do you idiots know how long it takes me to collect this stuff?! I should throw your heads at that damned catman next time I see him!" she berrated her slaves. They immediately attempted to clean up the mess even though the effort itself was rather futile now.

Johnny spins around, away from the mess, in part to protect Trixie from it, in part to hide his own gagging. The enchantment on his cloak makes it somewhat difficult to focus one's eyes on his form while in motion. He takes a few steps, thankfully relieving him of the smell. A sigh of relief escapes him. "So, ah... Does that make you a necromancer, Miss?" Johnny calls out, still facing the other way.

Amabella was rather stiff with her response, and resentment was clear in her tone, "Yes. Of sorts." This might seem strange to those with any knowledge of the dark arts. The woman was undead, but did not seem to be a lich-- at least not in any traditional sense. Whether Amabella was subjected to serve with some form of limited will or not was yet to be apparent. If she were still alive, she might have found herself somewhat dizzy from persistently attempting to keep her blood-shot eyes upon Johnny. Undead were still subjectable to tricks of the mind and eye, depending on their state of decay and how they were created in the first place. "I hope that isn't a problem. The last people who decided that was a problem made this happen. We don't want that, do we?"

Johnny turns to face the woman at her change of tone. "No, of course not. I just don't have many dealings with the undead in general." He pauses, remembering something. "I just met the first vampires I've ever spoken to the other day, and I'm surprised myself that I could call them my friends." Trixie lets out a soft whimper, and Johnny hugs her close. "It's okay, Trixie."

Amabella relaxed a bit when the possibility of more conflict seemed slim. She trembled a bit upon hearing the word 'vampires', and her brow twitched at 'friends'. Amabella gripped the edge of the headstone tightly to the point of damaging her own fingers, well past the point anyone living would allow themselves out of rage. The ichor oozing out of the torn flesh was an unnatural dark violet, and it gave off a very low hiss as it started to eat through the marble below. "Those... -things-... Ugh, being in the abomination city is painful as it is. The thought of them prancing along in their undeath..." Amabella was attempting to keep herself from exploding in anger... and looked to be failing miserably. Whatever servants of hers that were in the immediate area noticed their master's mood and backed off nervously.

Johnny squints a bit at the woman's hands, unsure of what he is seeing in the dim light. Her rage at the idea of vampires is apparent, however. "Please forgive me if I brought up a touchy subject, Miss." He starts to wonder exactly whom he has met in this strangest of locations.

Amabella finally managed to contain herself, since there have been enough meltdowns lately. It'd be better to make sure the graveyard didn't look completely trashed, anyway. Amabella placed a palm to her forhead and groaned before finding her composure again. "That's putting it likely... Don't worry, I won't waste time on you. I wouldn't be surprised if you pulled a dragon or something out of your cape, after the last few louts that I ran into recently." This might be more plausible than Amabella might realize, if only visually. She looked down at her gory fingertips as if she was checking her nails, her disappointment just adding to her gloomy appearance. "Ugh... I hate it when I do this..." Amabella leered over to Johnny before putting the thought out of mind. "I'll fix them later. I have no idea what'd happen if I got near that... thing... in your arms, anway."

Johnny shakes his head. "She's harmless. She'd probably just cry, at least if you brought your... Friends with you. She's just a baby." Johnny takes a step forward, making it a bit clearer what she is actually referring to. "Oh, my... That's... Uh, ahem... Unusual."

Amabella didn't seem to be any less repulsed by the magical creature. "These numbskulls can barely manage manual labour, so there's nothing to really worry about." Years of being a corpse generally makes one forget fear and the reasons for it. "What's unusual?" she asked, peering around to the opposite side Johnny was on, then back toward him. "Never been to a graveyard before?"

Johnny gulps, getting a little nervous. "No, your... Hands. I thought I saw... Never mind." He adjusts his goggles back to his forehead, as they had started to slide down to his eyes. Trixie doesn't move, asleep in the comfort of his arms despite the dialogue.

Amabella looked down at her fingers again. She was probably too used to sustaining damage at this point to think anything of it. "Uh... I'll be fine. I just need to Touch something before it gets too bad," she explained. Amabella looked over to Johnny again, temptation slightly renewed at the idea. "You could help make it easier for me, but I doubt that thing would appreciate it. Wouldn't hurt too much at all, either." With Amabella's no-longer-existent concept of pain, these words wouldn't be so reassuring.

Johnny looks confused. "Touch? I don't know what you mean... How can I help?" Johnny is less and less comfortable with his surroundings and this woman the longer he stays here.

Amabella alternated curling and uncurling the fingers of her left hand, "It would be hard to explain it, but I would be taking a little bit of your 'energy' to heal myself. You look like you would know what a paladin is, or a magical or spiritual healer. It's like that, but... we'd be on opposite sides of the exchange." Sounds simple, but a few kinds of dangerous. Johnny shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "I see... I don't know about that." Thinking a little more clearly now, Johnny speaks up with a little more confidence. "How else can that be fixed? Surely there's another way." He doesn't entirely trust that procedure to be safe, and with Trixie's safety in mind, he can't risk it.

Amabella simply shrugged. "You aren't a necromancer, and there's nothing else that's living around... and wouldn't tear off either of our limbs for the effort."

Johnny tilts his head slightly. "Would that mean you are not living?" Knowing very little about undead and how one becomes undead, he doesn't know any other way to ask.

Amabella was having trouble processing the question. "I... what?" More and more bizarre questions lately. "I have no pulse, but I'm still able to walk around. You mentioned vampires before, but this confuses you? Hm..." Pilar wonders just what the hell she wandered into. "Don Johnny? Why are you here?"

Johnny jerks his head to look as Pilar speaks his name, at once both happy to hear her and scared at how Amabella may react. "Pilar!? Why am I...? Why are you here?" He quickly moves to put himself between Pilar and Amabella, in preemption of a possible negative reaction. He looks back to the undead woman. "So you are undead. I'm sorry, Miss, but I don't think I can help." Trixie stirs in his arms, awakened by the sudden movements. The realization of why Pilar might be here hits Johnny, but he does not speak any further. Instead, he watches Amabella intently.

Amabella gave no real reaction to the addition of more company. "I see. Ah, again, I'll make due until I can treat myself later... A friend? A welcome sight, to be sure." Amabella's expression was rather plain, but her words dripped with a subtle venom to them. Her skeletal servants finally finished clearing the main signs of destruction. They made their exit south without waiting for any further commands.

Pilar said to Johnny, "I am here... because Doña Larewen say to me there was fountain which..." She shakes her head. "Is not important now. What happen here? Are you hurt? Who is this?"

Johnny nods to Amabella. "Yes, this is a good friend of mine." He turns back to Pilar. "Yes, I thought so. No, I am fine. This is... Well, I don't know." Once again, he looks back to Amabella, tired of having to turn back and forth but still sure of why he positioned himself here. "I never did get your name, Miss. As you may have heard, this is Pilar, and I am Johnny." He gives his usual respectful bow, holding Trixie in one arm and using his other to flourish. Trixie yawns audibly, her voice not unlike that of a small human child. "And this is Trixie."

Amabella slid off of the gore-stained grave marker she was sitting on, bending down to collect a stave previously hidden behind the stone figure. The wood was thick and gnarled, with dark engravements along the entirety of its form. They glowed to life upon Amabella's touch, pulsing an ethereal green, like veins in the staff. Amabella used it to aid in walking over to the man and his pet. Her stare went through him more than at him, but the woman made no hostile actions yet. "My name is not for either of you. It is a pleasure, though... but not for your friend."

Pilar looks down at the ground, trembling slightly under the other woman's gaze. "It is like I tell you," she murmurs to Johnny. "Everywhere, they hate us."

Johnny steps back toward Pilar as Amabella makes her approach. "I don't know what problems you have with vampires, or anyone else for that matter." He pulls his cloak around his left shoulder, covering Trixie in his left arm. "But I would kindly ask you don't step any closer." The woman's words and temperament gave him no reason to believe she had any good intentions. Whether she ever did, he wasn't so sure about anyway.

Amabella probably had good intentions. Usually. Sometimes, in a dream. "They distort the cycle of life," was all the explanation she gave before raising her staff between them. Energy crackled at the twisted object's head, arching off after just a moment to strike out at Johnny. It would slag the point wherever it made contact with, though held no physical force at all. The intention would be to get Johnny out of the way for a followup blast towards the vampire behind him.

Pilar didn't know what was being said at this point, but she didn't need to be fluent in Common to understand that in this context, arcing magical energy = bad. She shrieked and dropped to the ground, grabbing at Johnny's cloak with the intent to pull him down and out of harm's way.

Johnny, anticipating some sort of attack, begins his attempt to spin right to left, moving across Amabella's path to Pilar, but is interrupted by Pilar's grabbing of his cloak. Luckily, being pulled from that angle detaches the cloak from his shoulders, covering Pilar instead. Mentally sending his intent to the cloak's enchantment, it would shift from dazzling to light-absorbing, effectively hiding Pilar from vision. Recovering from his failed spin move, and reeling from the strike having caught his right arm during the spin, Johnny stands briefly immobile, to Amabella's right. "Stop! She is young, and has done nothing wrong!" Trixie cries out, in what is probably the most frightening moment of her short life. "Lindita!" Cloakless, it is not hard to tell that Johnny is fishing around in his bag for something.

Amabella aimed her follow-up shock in the general direction where Pilar fell, but to no avail. The magical lightning sundered the ground where it struck about a foot behind the vampire, leaving her unharmed. "It has nothing to do with age or actions!" Amabella held her weapon to the sky as she shouted over the crackling, "She was made into an abomination, by her will or another's, and shall be returned to the cycle unblighted!" More energy shot off of the staff, though this time hitting a collection of trees in the background. There was hardly an inch of a gap between their twisted trunks, with branches entangled in each other, forming a natural cage of sorts. Ghastly light snaked past to whatever was withing. No immediate effect was apparent, but the earth began to quake with each repeated bolt in that direction.

Pilar stayed huddled on the ground beneath the cloak as blast after blast flew above her head. A brief pause in the volley gave her time to move, at which point she ran for cover behind a tombstone. Her few means of defense had all flown from her mind, leaving her a shivering mess. Tears of terror ran down her face. "Por que yo... por que yo..." she mumbled to herself.

Johnny finally finds what he is looking for, and pulls it out. He points Trixie to the north and sets her on the ground. "Close your eyes and run!" He tells her, and she does so, completely trusting. Right arm still in pain from the attack, he takes the small object he had retrieved in his left hand and throws it at the ground, aiming for the undead's feet. The object would erupt in flashing lights and snapping sounds, like a firecracker, enhanced by illusionary magic. As soon as he throws the object, he sprints for the tombstone Pilar hid behind. "Pilar, let's go! Back to the fountain!

Amabella was blinded (AGAIN, within the span of half a day) by the dazzling lights and further disoriented from the sounds. However, what's done is done... Boughs and trunks were snapped aside from the massive figure rising from its natural grave. The corpse of a dragon, taken well before its time, rose to animation from the site. Its lower body was buried deep within the earth, and snapped off mid-spine as the gargantuan undead lizard crawled out of its death-crib. Otherwordly flames burnt like massive torches where eyes should have been. Flesh in the later stages of decomposition hung loosely from its skeleton. The mass of horror clawed its way to block the opposite exit of the graveyard, viscera trailing in its wake. Black flames spilled out from its maw, jaw and chest tightening to focus it before unleashing the wicked, burning halitosis in Johnny's direction.

Pilar's legs were like lead. She couldn't move a muscle, not even to save her own life. Fear gripped her like a vice and wasn't letting go. If she heard Johnny's shouting, she gave no indication. The cracking of earth and wood, though, THAT she heard. She would have soiled herself, if she was even capable of it anymore.

Johnny can see that Pilar won't be able to move herself. He lowers his goggles to cover his eyes, at once protecting them and enhancing his night vision. When the dragon erupted, he spun to face the monstrosity. Hoping the tombstone would be sufficient cover for Pilar, and with nowhere else to go, Johnny sprinted toward the thing and dove, followed by a roll in an attempt to avoid the initial flames and draw the continued breath downward instead of at Pilar's position. He feels the sting of intense heat on his back, charring the leather of his tunic. With no idea how a necromancer's control over undead things works, Johnny takes a guess that Amabella's staff is important. How he might get to it is a mystery, with the forward half of a dragon between them. With vampires on his mind, he begins conjuring an illusion of a swarm of bats, disturbed by the commotion, to swoop in directly at Amabella. (Per Hollow's rules on illusions, if I'm doing this correctly) If the illusion succeeds, the bats would have physical impacts on her body and, he hopes, would knock the staff out of her hands. Meanwhile, he is directly underneath a towering undead dragon ready to incinerate him. So much for heroics.

Unholy flame-breath continued to follow Johnny in his maneuvers, ceasing moments before Johnny came within proximity of the monstrous creation. The dragon's motions were slow and difficult as it began to turn towards him for another attack. Amabella took notice of where the man ran from cover and began to make her way over to the location just as illusionary bats formed and assaulted her. The sudden 'attack' took her by surprise, with stave being knocked out of grip before realization set in. There was no sense of life (or undeath) from the swarm, which caused the illusions to lose their effect moments after Amabella collected herself. Her stave was left on the ground, unimportant after serving its purpose. The item was a tool to channel enough magical energy to pull a fragment of the dragon's soul from the void, and had no use in actually controling it afterword. Content that her creation was following its task obediently enough, Amabella returned to pursue her previous goal. Amabella marched over to Pilar's general hiding location, using a diety-gifted power to sense for her where sight failed. Being a priestess for Death had its perks, though this wouldn't give any real vision of Pilar, just the strong feeling of her presence. A similar, heatless ebony flame surrounded Amabella's hands as she stalked forward. Running would be a good idea.

Pilar was borderline catatonic when she heard the rush of dragonfire. At once she was transported to a different time and a different place. Caravans burned around her in her mind's eye and screams rang in her ears, the pain of her people and ugly slurs from their exterminators. They thought her dead. Perhaps she already was. Perhaps she should be.

Johnny watches the dragon struggle to keep up with him, new ideas forming in his head. Being a good street performer comes with a certain degree of acrobatics, something he is thankful to have now. Looking back, he sees Amabella approaching Pilar's hiding place. He breaks out into a run perpendicular with the dragon, forcing it to turn the other way in order to attack. At the same time, he pulls out something he'd picked up for no apparent reason, and the likely reason Trixie was unable to ride in his bag anymore - a giant's helmet. Thinking illusions likely wouldn't have much bearing on her anymore, Johnny does the only thing he can think of to try and stop Amabella's advance. Turning momentum from his run into momentum for a spin, Johnny twirls around and flings the helmet at her back like a flying disc. Stumbling after the throw, he falls and rolls once, coming to a stop on his hands and knees. Catching his breath, he raises his head to see the results of his throw.

(Amabella had to leave abruptly, so we assumed the helmet knocked her out and the dragon was neutralized. This was so long ago that I’m not sure if we got confirmation from Amabella if this was a suitable outcome. Please contact me if you have any objection.)

Pilar is jolted back into the present by the sound of metal striking stone. An old helmet had ricocheted off the necromancer's head and bounced off the tombstone behind her before landing in her lap. Dazed, she stared at it before dissolving once more into tears. "Sin valor, sin valor, sin valor..."

Johnny breathes a sigh of relief as the helmet hits Amabella square in the back of the head and flattens her on the ground. At the same time, the dragon miraculously collapses under its own weight, perhaps due to its master's incapacitation. Satisfied that the dragon is no longer a threat, Johnny quickly rises and runs up to Amabella. She is definitely unconscious. He tries to come up with some victorious saying about blind hatred and rage, but the thought of Pilar's safety quickly overtakes him and he runs off to reach the tombstone that hides her. Reverting the enchantment on his cloak fully reveals the young woman sitting on the ground with a helmet in her lap. "Pilar..." Johnny kneels down in front of her and holds out a hand to help her stand. "Are you all right?"

Pilar continues crying, "No pude salvarlos, no pude salvarme, no pude salvar a nadie. Soy sin valor, sin coraje..."

Trixie, hiding behind a rock just outside the main graveyard area, sees that all the scary things have stopped and comes galloping back to Johnny and Pilar. She slows to a trot as she approaches and finds Pilar crying. "Lindita..." Her favorite word learned from Pilar, she whispers as she sidles up to her left side, nuzzling her arm. Johnny uses his outstretched arm to gently remove the helmet and set it aside, before placing his other hand on her shoulder. "Pilar, you're safe now. But we should get away from here."

Pilar hardly takes notice of the foal, or of Johnny's hand on her shoulder. "S-Safe? Nowhere is safe for my people. Even here, so far away, the hate follows us." She was so scared and confused, and had latched onto the only explanation for Amabella's hatred that she had, not knowing it was her new status as a vampire that was the true root of the problem. "You see now why my people wander."

Johnny sits down next to her to get off his aching feet, careful not to touch his lightly toasted back against anything. "The world is full of hateful people. Conflict is unavoidable. But you cannot forget that not everyone is full of hatred. You, Pilar, are not like that. I know it. This woman hated you because of something that was forced upon you, not because of who you really are." He stops there, unsure of what to say next. Trixie puts her front hooves on Pilar's leg, and looks up at her face. "Pilar?"

Pilar said to Johnny, "My... my vampire-ness? But she was not alive, also. Why...?" She looks down at the small unicorn leaning on her leg and absently rubs her neck. "Why do she hate me when we are the same?"

Trixie lays her head on Pilar's leg, hoping to comfort her further. Johnny shakes his head. "I don't know. I don't think she was a vampire." He sits up, looking out over the tombstone at the fallen necromancer and her monstrosity. "What I do know is that as long as you allow me, I will do everything I can to ensure she does not try this again. Or anyone else, for that matter. I'll be here for you." Suddenly, he remembers something. "Oh no, I hope..." He opens his bag and digs around for something.

Pilar said to Johnny, "You are very kind to me. but you know me little. You are a nice person." A juvenile compliment, really, but juvenile words were all she had at this point. "What do you search for?"

Johnny sighs a bit. It's not perfect, but it's not ruined, either. He pulls out his latest creation, a pair of roses. One red, and one blue. They are bound together by two strings, one silver, and one gold. Unfortunately, the lower half of the stems of the roses are snapped off, leaving them about six inches long. With a tiny pair of scissors, he removes the dangling halves of the stems and reties the strings. Not one to leave a creation of his mundane, he gave the strings and the roses an enchantment. Around the areas touched by Johnny, the strings are glowing their respective color, to slowly fade when contact ceases. The petals of the roses themselves also glow dimly, and the colors blend at the points they touch to create a beautiful purple hue. He looks up to Pilar, a red glow reflecting off her face and a blue glow off his. "I made this for you. For no particular reason but to lift your spirits at a time like this. I hope you like it." He holds it out to her and smiles.

Pilar takes the roses in hand. "They are very beautiful," she says, allowing herself a ghost of a smile. "Thank you."