RP:The Wandering Mage

This is a Necromancer's Guild RP.

Summary: While trying to find her way to the Black Library, Celaeno stumbles upon the master of the Necromancer's Guild. The two exchange words.

The Abyssal Forest

The body of a woman, wounded and oozing blackened blood, kneels in a puddle of corruption. Before her, a barrier stands between Lithrydel and a dark entity. It's release would mean certain doom. Her lips are twisted into a grimace, the glint of fang off-setting the slow, steady thump of a heart. A vampire with a beating heart? Interesting.

Celaeno , generally unfamiliar with vampires aside from their general unpleasantness, wandered into the dark forest after losing her way to a library. She squints and treads slower as her vision gets used to the lack of light, hands tucked in the sleeves of her dark robes, out of sight. It's only the coppery tang of blood in the air that makes her stop a few feet away from the wounded figure and only then does the other woman's shape become discernible to the daytime creature. Was it a fresh corpse or a dying person on the way to becoming one? "Hello?"

It was neither. The body kneeling before Celaeno is in a sort of statis. In fact, her voice, when it does come, appears to be from elsewhere. It is a disembodied melody, spoken with disdain, "If you're here to end me, be prepared to die yourself," she hisses. Celaeno wasn't the first. A few foolish members of the other Houses considered it, but the Banshee's presence alone was enough of a deterrent for the most part. "Go back to Vailkrin." In death, it is harder for the woman to tell the difference between the living and the dead. She studies from her vantage point. "Or Sage. Wherever you're from."

Celaeno 's slightly pointed ears perked, on high alert as the disembodied voice echoes around her. Other than a tightening of her shoulders and a slightly quickening heartbeat, she seems more or less composed as she raises her eyes slightly up from the stranger's shape and her attention flits around the trees. Her hands relax at her sides, showing that she wears an odd pair of silver gauntlets covered in glowing runes. "Good thing I'm not here to end anyone. And as much as I would like to return to that...interesting city, I lost my way to their library and find myself here." Instead of turning back and attempting to retrace her steps, though, Cela returns her gaze to the kneeling figure, dark eyebrows going up. Curiosity did always get the better of her. "Might you know where the library is? Or...perhaps you need some kind of assistance with whatever ritual you seem to be performing?"

Larewen arches a brow. The elf... no, half-elf... is seeking the Black Library? This results in a cacaphanous eruption of laughter. This time, when the necromancer speaks, it is from behind the woman. She's materialized, and upon turning around Celaeno will see a translucent echo of the woman kneeling in the blood. "I have no interest in directing those I do not know to the Black Library," she states coolly. Her wounds mirror that of the body before them: a gouge in her throat denotes a near beheading and several gashes split the black-runed, pale flesh. "And what, pray tell, assistance could you offer that I do not already have knowledge of myself? I've never seen your face."

Celaeno represses the urge to grin. Finally the place had a name. When the voice comes from behind her, she inhales a breath to calm her nerves and turns to see the spectral form properly. "Holding things, drawing circles, lighting candles, the sort of mundane work a lesser assistant is supposed to perform so the magic-wielder in question can put more focus on their work." Despite the grisly nature of the wounds on both forms of the powerful stranger, the half-elf's attention only flits over them before returning back to her face. Necromancer, possibly? She didn't know of many other specialties that used such macabre means of achieving their ends and certainly not many others that could sustain themselves while bleeding that much. "As for me, I'm an aspiring scholar in search of knowledge. If you and this Black Library have no interest in newcomers, then I will trouble you only a tad further for directions back to town so I can be on my way and you can go back to your work."

The banshee arches a dark brow upward, dual-colored eyes studying the mage. In this form, her brown eye - the one on the right - does not properly perform its job, and thus she is unable to discertain what sort of magic the woman specializes in. Larewen takes a step nearer to the woman, studying her in silence. Much of what Celaeno has said is familiar to the ghastly elf. "You are aware that the Black Library's tomes are not of magic to be taken lightly? Perhaps it is the library within the Mage's Guild you seek. You do not look to be a practitioner of dark magics." A glance is cast past her, toward the necromancer's body. Surely she misses her husk?

"If you mean the tower library west of here, I've seen it. It's lovely." A wistful note entered Celaeno's voice as she spoke of it, but then the specter loomed a tad closer. She stands firm, boots set as wide as her shoulders, maintaning eye contact. "The ominous name implies that much, but I'm not a stranger to those arts. I studied under someone obsessed with them. He was greedy with information, but I picked up enough of his scraps to have a working knowledge of its consequences." All it took was a quick loosening of the leather straps under her left gauntlet to reveal proof of that, a forearm covered in a black stocking that stopped at a rounded wrist. She tugged it back on and tightened it straight away, offering the necromancer only a glance as the runes covering the gauntlet lit back to life once they touched Cela's skin. "At the moment I specialize in runic enchantments, but I've traveled a long way to see if it's worth it to delve into my teacher's madness further. Most of the libraries I've visited haven't been nearly as vast as the ones in this land..."

Larewen glances down at the woman's hand - or lack thereof. "You'd be better off returning to the land of the living," the necromancer says finally, but not quite so dismissively. A step is taken near her body and a ghostly hand reaches out to touch the blackened runes. "I lead the Necromancer's Guild and would be happy to teach you what it is you wish to know, but... now is not yet the time. This city will be at war with itself soon enough, girl. If you end up caught up in that, I'd have to raise you from the dead in order to teach you."

"They have a guild here?" For the first time during their conversation, genuine shock registered on her face, stormy eyes widening. She tucks her arms under her robe sleeves again, almost protective. "That is...startling. I've never been to a place where those magicks were common enough for those practitioners to organize. It's always been the rare person labeled as crazed who gets run out of town or has to duck into hiding, my mentor included." The mention of a civil war was enough to make even her inquisitive side take notice and shut up. She bows her head--after all, the stranger was a person of note in the area. "My thanks for the talk m'lady. I'm Celaeno." As much as she desired directions to the 'land of the living,' as the bloody necromancer put it, she figured she had interrupted the other's work quite enough. It appeared...trying to say the least.

The banshee cants her head to one side, sending a cascade of bistre waves over her face briefly. "You walk among the dead. Here the morals of the living mean little, girl," she states matter-of-factly. Her lips split into a wide grin and in the depths of those ghastly eyes of hers, Celaeno will see a tint of madness. No, the necromancer is just as crazy as the worst of them. "Lady Larewen Dragana," she replies, stressing her title. It's no lie the woman's self importance has taken her pride to a new level, but then... for a woman seeking the throne, seeking to teach the other Houses of Vailkrin a lesson, is it reallly a suprise?

"That is sound logic for there being such a guild." Cela kept her hands under her robes, covered and symbolically safe for the moment. If she hadn't already thought the spectral figure mad, the grin would confirm it. Did she want to walk this path again? Had she learned her lesson? Pride and hunger might get the better of her in the end, but for the moment, she'd take her leave. Recognition did dawn her here eyes, though, noticably, making her bow a little deeper as she backed away toward the forest. "Well met Lady Dragana. I wish you well in your work." "Mm," the necromancer responds, watching curiously as the other begins her retreat. A ghastly shoulder lifts upward in lieu of the farewell and no thanks is offered for the other's well wishes. Granted, those have become so few and far between that she no longer knows how to respond appropriately. Her eyes study the mage and, depending on how available to manipulation the woman's mind is, she may feel a small nudge - something to fuel the latent desire of that pride, that hunger.

This mage had focused on strengthening her psyche against attacks on it, so her power in that area was enough to detect the intrusion, however slight. It produced only a vague awareness, though, of the other trying to influence her, not any insight into how. The fact she'd picked it up made her tap a few of the runes under her sleeves to activate a subtle shield around her mind, just in case. Yet if the necromancer could delve a little deeper to read things, she'd get a sense her nudge still had the desired effect. If there was one thing that drove her after she parted ways with her former mentor, it was spite, to prove that he couldn't manipulate her in such ways and get away with it. That same emotion flared up just then, fueling her foolhardy determination to get what she wanted, to prove she wasn't just some girl. She would leave with that returning grin of her own, though not quite as mad...yet.