RP:Third Time's a Charm

Part of the Rest in Pieces: Vailkrin! Arc

Summary: Emrith finds Larewen where her body is and, without really asking, the necromancer recruits his help with getting her back into her body. Relocating the binding to a mana font Emrith gifted her during their last attempt at making their relationship work, the two succeed - but the Everspider sees an opportunity and the two find themselves fighting the creature once more. Afterwards, Emrith sees the extent of the damage he's done to Larewen when they cross into a desolate and fallen House whose wards are no longer in place.

Forest of Abyssal Darkness

Larewen’s body rests in the last place Emrith saw it: kneeling in a puddle of corruption and oozing that blackness. The slow, steady beat of her heart is barely audible under the ceaseless pacing of Corruption beyond the barrier. The banshee is visible alongside the wounded, near-death elder, her gaze fixed upon her own body in thoughtful silence. She reaches out, pale, translucent flesh touching the glowing runes engraved upon her body.

It is often Emrith's wont, when in a particularly unsettled state of mind, to wander forests. Whether the paths he treads are those winding through Sage, or the upland pine forests of Rynvale, or the darker, low-lying woods near Vailkrin matters little. Today it is this abyssal forest in which he wanders, letting his feet take him wherever they wish. He weaves around trees, navigates twists of scabrous roots and avoids the larger predators of the area with an almost preternatural ease, his dyed cloak flowing out behind him, jade clasp undone at his pale throat. When he reaches the clearing where Larewen's body rests, and spots the ethereal form nearby, he stops short, mouth momentarily falling open. "This," he says gently into the quiet, "is not my idea of a good omen, where beginnings are concerned. A bad end, mayhap."

Larewen lifts her head, mismatched eyes turning toward Emrith as he speaks. Quietly she studies his expression while he takes in his own handiwork. “Actually,” the banshee begins, her lip curling upward faintly. “This was the bad ending to our last attempt; it will also be the beginning. Do you have the font with you?” She waits for a response and, if he replies positively, she’ll continue with, “Put it there.” A pale, ghastly finger gestures to the edge of the black puddle before her body. “Do you think you can hold the creature at bay for a few moments?”

Emrith wordlessly takes out the small stone. It is still brimming with magic, and he sets it where Larewen's noncorporeal voice indicates. "The golem?" he asks. "Is that the creature you mean? If so, I am sure I can, at the least, tangle it up for a little while. I do not believe I could expect to best it without serious risk to myself, especially considering the--" He gestures with his right hand, showing the ring on his finger. "This is going to make things a little harder. I suppose," he finishes, looking sheepish, "that I have myself to thank for a great deal of this."

Larewen watches as the font is placed and as Emrith mentions the ring, her nose wrinkles slightly. “You do not need to best it. Only hold it for a few moments when the barrier comes down. I can handle the rest,” she assures him and then, her mouth is opening impossibly ride. A necromantic keening fills the air around them, coaxing the golem into a rage. Larewen pays it no mind, for she is focused on drawing upon energies she has stolen over the months she’s spent as an entity. It is a binding, twisting magic that curls its web around her very soul - visibly even. Thick, shadowy ropes begin to curl around the banshee, and they seem to rise from the puddle of corruption around her body. As the ichor is drawn upward from the ground. It is a tether between entity and husk and, as her spell continues, as she is drawn slowly into herself, pain wracks her body. The familiar feel of the curse; the weakness of her state of being. “Prepare yourself, Emrith. I am about to bring down the barrier.” And she does just that. From her kneeling position, not yet relishing her return to a physical form, she begins to under the magics that hold Corruption at bay. The golem roars and lunges at the pair the moment it feels the shift. “Hold it back. Five minutes. That’s all I need to drain the stone and to rework its magic!”

Emrith erupts into swift, calculated motion the instant the barrier begins to drop. Heleg and Nahr are in his hands, blurring through complex forms nearly too fast for the naked eye to follow. Emrith has had months of relatively little action, but has kept himself sharp by hunting; gorged on blood, honed for purposes just like these, he is perhaps the best tool for this task. The golem, huge and hulking, storms toward them, and Emrith lunges to meet it, employing every trick in his notoriously deep repertoire to keep it at bay. He has no hope of outmuscling it or overpowering it blow for blow, and as such, he decides to play a rather deadly game of evasion with the brutish thing, skipping to and fro, ducking and dodging and leaping, always keeping himself between Larewen and the monstrosity, even if it means a direct if momentary confrontation. A particularly heavy blow from the creature sends Heleg out of his left hand, and Emrith's fingers go numb from the shock. Opening his own mouth wide, he spews a torrent of words into the chilly air, and a tendril of energy suddenly rips up from the grounded sword, skating across the forest floor as Emrith leaps to avoid it. It freezes the golem's huge feet in place, if only for a moment, long enough for the spell-blade to seize his blade. "You had best hurry!" he shouts in elvish over his shoulder, then remounts the attack, pummelling and hacking the golem while its feet are momentarily immobilized. He even seems to be taking little chunks out of the great beast, for the little good it could possibly do. The ring on his right forefinger pulses and throbs, setting up an eerie counterpoint to the sluggish, hateful pulses coming from the corrupted construct before him. Emrith feels a pang of worry; if this cannot be settled sooner rather than later, a titanic conflict may come to pass. It is a thing he knows in his bones, a thing he dreads in a way that no threat before this one has managed to elicit.

The golem swings its fist at Emrith again, seeking to cast him aside and clear the path to its nemesis: the necromancer. Larewen has become the bane of the creature’s continued existence, and her death seems quite appealing. It lunges, loosing a horrid growl as its maw parts to snap at the spell blade. Larewen, on the other hand, does not respond to Emrith’s words. She’s reaching, snaring the font from before her and grasping it tightly. What few tendrils of magic remain within her reach out, coaxing what lies dormant in the stone into her body. She drains the vessel, savoring every last thread of magic in the brief moment it takes to consume it. And then she is casting again. Her dark energies pulsate outward, a thick oppressive miasma that targets the area around the golem. “Put space between you and it, Emrith. I don’t want you caught in it,” she hisses in that rolling tongue of theirs. Crumbling the stone between scarred fingers, the woman stands weakly and stumbles forward. First one step, then another as her magic twists the mana dust into something closer to grave dirt. Words are rolling off her tongue, and she pays little mind to the creature’s sudden shift of attention: she is too focused on enchanting what was once a stone. It won’t be until Emrith is clear of her trajectory that the necromancer will fling the binding dust at Corruption.

Emrith feels the influx of darker energies, catches Larewen's warning, and beats a hasty retreat. As he goes, he draws Heleg's point across the ground while swirling Nahr's tip through the air in a complex series of interlocking circles. With two shouted words, he ignites two spells one after the other. Ice rips across the ground toward the golem's feet, trying to once more pin it in place, even as a spiderweb of fire licks across the intervening space and drapes itself over the monster. It roars, thrashing all the more mightily to loose itself, but for the moment at least, it seems pinned. One of its flailing limbs catches Emrith a glancing blow, sending him sailing through the air to fetch up against a tree with an audible crunch. He is slow to rise, shaking his head and trembling all over. Short, sharp gasps of effort burst from between his parted lips; unnecessary though they are, his body still tends toward the habits of its time among the living when under such great duress.

Part of Larewen wants to reach for Emrith, to verify he’s alright, but she doesn’t. Instead, she meets the golem head on and, even as it swings its meaty fist at her, as it threatens to conjure otherworldly magics of its own, she hurls the binding dust at it. A summoned, haunting wind carried it to its destination, dusting the creature as Emrith’s own runes activate. The creature roars, having not had enough time to accomplish what it intended. It’s yet another temporary fix to a far more grave problem but it seems to do its job. This time, the barrier is smaller - limited to a small circle around the golem. Larewen, on the other hand, stumbles backward, collapsing into the blackened pool of her own blood. Her heart picks up its beating, reminding her of the aberration she has become whilst the runes sear her flesh. Her gaze, wrought with a pain she’d forgotten to expect, falls upon the spell blade. “I don’t know how long it will hold.”

It is at this moment that things begin to go horribly wrong. Emrith, still trembling, takes a tentative step toward the fallen Larewen, who he can see from the tail of his left eye. Before he can even get close, however, he feels the strength draining out of him, feels his body swooning forward. He has just enough presence of mind to avoid ploughing face-first into the dirt, catching himself on his hands. A viscous, tarlike substance suddenly begins to pour out of the jewel on the ring he wears, inky and awful, forming itself first into a puddle and then into a blurry, arachnoid form. What light there is in this fell place is quickly eaten by the growing creature, which assumes a clearer shape as it grows. The world around Emrith and Larewen darkens as the Everspider swallows the light, heaving itself forward. Instead of battening on Emrith himself, or upon the beleaguered necromancer, it makes a beeline straight for the barrier. By the time it reaches that ensorcelled barricade it is the size of a small house, and still growing. It rears up, issuing a low, moaning keening sound as it lunges up and across the protective dome. It sprawls atop it, legs spreading and then clutching downward, squeezing as if it is a skeletal eight-fingered hand trying to crack some obscene egg. And crack it must, in time, for the Everspider has had months to feed, to grow, and has decided that now, in this place, at this time, is the moment of its second coming.

Larewen is weak. So very weak. She shouldn’t be surprised, considering her assassination at Emrith’s hands, and yet it’s so much worse than she’d expected. As if that weren’t bad enough, her right eye picks up on what her left cannot: the Everspider. “Oh for the love of Vakmatharas!” she swears, shoving herself to her feet. She doesn’t turn toward Emrith. Instead, she lunged toward the newly created barrier, reaching into the nearly depleted reserves of magic that she has to conjure a spell of banishment - anything to deter the creature from its feast. “EMRITH!” she cries out. “We have -got- to do something about that damned ring of yours!” The necromancer swears loudly after this and lifts her hands, shadowy tendrils reaching outward to snare the creature and try to pull it back. “You’re. Not. Doing. This!” she growls at the creature.

The protective barrier is a source of nearly boundless dark energy, acting as it is like a cocoon around the golem of corruption imprisoned within it. But the Everspider has been denied conquest for so long that as soon as Larewen begins to pull on it, it whirls its massive body and springs toward her, huge and ungainly and insatiably hungry. Here is something to conquer; that delicious egg will wait, while Larewen, perhaps, will not. In its rudiment of a mind, which is still coalescing and stirring deep within its form, it remembers being fought, being beaten, and vengeance is simply too great to resist. Emrith, seeing this, springs toward the huge beast, swords once more in his hands, attacking with all he is worth. Now that the great spider appears to have birthed itself from the ring, Emrith feels, for the moment at least, almost no connection to it at all. Its freedom has either stretched or severed the link between them. Still swelling, still toughening its exoskeleton by some dark miracle from shadow into a flexible black shell, the Everspider descends toward Larewen, mandibles clicking, thick oily ropes of webbing spurting out to bind her. Emrith's swords pierce its hide, eliciting another shriek from the monster, but nearly as quickly as the wounds are made, they patch over with new, shiny chitin. In desperation, Emrith hurls himself bodily at the creature, frantic to keep it from Larewen as long as he can. "Whatever you can do, do it!" he shouts! "Corruption is safe, but we have to end it!"

Larewen isn’t able to avoid the coils of webbing tossed at her and those that make it past Emrith find their mark. End it… That is something that needs done, no doubt about it. “You won’t like it,” she replies coolly, in elvish. And then she is reaching out to the creature, extending pale and scarred hands in the direction of the Everspider. When she speaks this time, it is to the hungering creature. How different from a hungry dog can it be, after all. “You have two options, creature. You can die, or you can live. You hunger for darkness; I can provide you with that. I can feed you, strengthen you…” she takes a weak step nearer the spider that seeks to devour her. “Or I can end you.” It’s a bluff, as Larewen is in no shape to do the latter presently. Nonetheless, she has a secondary approach: she summons a pool of darkness from which the creature might feed if it wishes.

The only reason Emrith and Larewen are still whole, not devoured or dismantled in the roiling guts of Grrya Dama-Ka, is that the Everspider is still forming, still not wholly in control of its full arsenal of abilities. Its webs are rather ordinary thus far, strong and sticky but not magically conductive as they will later become. Its legs, while spiky and dangerous, are not barbed with thousands of miniature needlelike hairs with which it can harry its prey. It is also not yet capable of spewing magic from its mouth, amplified by its own webs, toward hapless targets somewhere along the strands. But it is still large, and fearsome, and ravenous. Unfortunately for Larewen, the darkness she summons holds no interest for it. She is live meat - or, at the least, alive in the barest sense of the word - and she is an agent which seeks to stop it; ergo, she makes a far tastier snack than this undulating pool of inky blackness. The Everspider hits the ground in front of her, hunches its thorax and then bullrushes her, Emrith hanging onto its side and stabbing repeatedly at the joints of its legs with Heleg and Nahr both. He is screaming something unintelligible, trying to clamber up onto its hairy back, the better to approach its head and deliver a mortal blow to a weak segment of armour before the beast becomes too big to fell. Loosing another wild torrent of magic of his own, Emrith imparts to his blades their native enchantments, endeavouring to burn and chill the spider by turns. It shudders and bellows, but keeps coming, hesitant but inexorable in its shambling advance.

Larewen isn’t overly surprised, but appears to have no intention of moving out of the creature’s way. As it passes over the pool of darkness, another spell forms on her lips. This pool shifts, condenses, and suddenly shoots upward - a wall meant to bite into the creature’s body in much the same fashion as a blade might tear into meat. It isn’t until that spell is cast that the necromancer rolls forward, ducking in order to escape the arachnid’s mandibles and take refuge near her conjured wall.

Emrith is paying no mind to the pool of darkness, being rather busy with keeping his perch and inflicting as much damage as he can upon the Everspider from above. The impact shoots through his feet and sends him sprawling across the arachnid's curved, humped back as it squeals in outrage and agony in response to Larewen's surprise attack from below. The magical wall bites deep, and both of Emrith's blades punch downward from above a split second later. Grrya Dama-Ka thrashes and shrieks, spitting more web and trying in vain to loose lightning along those ley-lines to fry whatever it can. It knows now, as much as it can know anything, that it has made a terrible mistake. It wriggles around, trying to eel away into the darkness, the better to heal itself. It moves in fits and starts, dragging its bloated body across the floor of the clearing, meaning to perhaps seize upon the construct within its barrier on its way past. But Emrith has other plans, and so, for that matter, does Larewen, more than likely. He twists Heleg and Nahr viciously, torquing both wrists as he levers himself up onto his knees, trying to rip the great spider's innards apart. It does not kill the beast, but it does ensure that its progress is slow, all of its energy bent on healing its injuries instead of upon further manifestation. "Larewen, if you have one more spell in you," he grunts, "now would be a really...really...good...time..."

Larewen grunts in exhaustion, but pulls the wall apart nonetheless. It splits into slivers of darkness. Ice forms over it, hardening the lances into shadowy bolts of frost which she immediately looses upon the creature. Eight thin, long slivers fly toward the creatures eyes, seeking to pop them, to move through them and sever the retinas. It is all that she can manage before she takes a faltering step away. “I can’t… Emrith, I can’t do anymore,” she admits quietly.

Grrya Dama-Ka is nearing its goal when quite suddenly, it goes blind. Nothing in its long, long life has done this before, taken away the distant light of the world and plunged it into such deep, perfect blackness. Searing cold bolts rip into its head, and it feels the little thing on its back tumble away to avoid the icy shrapnel. Though it had been patient, had sucked away little sips of life energy from everything it could reach in the preceding months, it had not been enough. A quieter, less dramatic entrance, in hindsight, might have been better. As its consciousness begins to break up, it understands that its hunger may well have been its undoing. As if choking, it snatches at any and all of the life essence it can reach, trying in vain to heal its injuries. In its final extremity, its undignified dive toward a more permanent death, it does the last thing it can. Grrya Dama-Ka quivers, swells ominously, then explodes with terrific force. A tree nearby is literally sawn in half with the concussive force. Emrith, who is on the ground and huddled in on himself by this point, is splattered with ichor, and is spared most of the blast by the spider's height and his own proximity to the earth. Hopefully, Larewen has gotten to a distance or taken some sort of cover. But the true threat, the one against which there is no defense, is the smoke, a dark, billowing pall which rushes outward with gale force. It clouds the air for a moment, then drops in a tight, compact ball directly on top of Emrith, disappearing into him. The ring upon his finger bursts alight and is gone, leaving nothing more than a charred little ribbon of flesh on his finger where once it had rested. The Everspider's essence may be gone forever, but some shred of his legacy, the truest thread, may yet live on, so long as Emrith does. He rises unsteadily, eyes roving ceaselessly about the clearing, seeking Larewen. When he calls to her, his voice sounds normal. When he moves toward her, his lithe sylvan gait is undiminished, his grace unblemished. But there is something new within the spell-blade now. If it is not a presence in the truest sense - not something to be exorcised or conquered - it is a warping of things so subtle and complete that it would take a master of the arcane to even know that the change had been wrought externally. Where once Emrith's feelings had been a touch innocent, now there is calculation behind every intent. Where once the elf had loved with his heart, he now knows the depth of power to be obtained by using people like tools, as means to an end. And that end, his own now instead of the will of another, is a simple one. Entropy.

Larewen isn’t so fortunate to be fully in cover and several bits of shrapnel do tear into her. Fortunately, her heart is spared being speared by spidery bits, but she begins to bleed anew as the force of the explosion sends her flying backwards. With a sickening crack, the necromancer crashes into one of the dead and twisted trees and she slides down it. Larewen sees stars, for lack of a better word. Her lip quivers slightly and her heartbeat pushes blood out of her newly sustained wounds. Dazed, she looks past Emrith as he calls for her. “Em…rith…” she breathes, blood bubbling from her mouth. She didn’t see the darkness that curled into the man she loved; she didn’t see the creature’s true “demise.” Emrith finds Larewen a moment later, kneeling before her and attempting to gather her into his arms. Despite his own ordeal, he appears to be more or less whole, though all of his muscles feel sprung and overworked. "Are you all right, love?" he asks. "That was...not what I had expected. The important part, I think, is that the golem has been caged, and that you have taken back your physical form. The two of us have managed more than I had thought we might."

Larewen’s body is positively riddled with wounds. Some fresh, others a few months old and held in stasis by her binding spell. Dark blood oozes from where he’d buried the mana-eating blade into her neck. When he tries to draw her into his arms, she allows it. She folds herself into him, burying her face against his neck. Larewen doesn’t care that she smears blood on him, that the warm, blackened ichor oozes from her mouth as she presses her lips to his throat. “I need rest,” she murmurs. “It hurts…” Her flesh is hot to the touch.

"Then this, I am afraid, will hurt a little more." Emrith rises, lifting Larewen into his arms, and begins a slow, steady trek back toward House Dragana. "We will take you to where your wards will keep you safe. And there are no more assassins apt to do you in now, with me out of that particular role." He chuckles, falling quiet afterword and letting his feet lead him. His shortswords creak in their scabbards on his back, and Emrith has a fleeting thought that he has no memory of having put them back there. He dismisses it, however, as he comes around a turn in the path and approaches a portion of the woods he knows more or less by heart. "Almost there," he murmurs. "And I have no penchant for healing, but this is the best I can do. Just a little further." And then, in the same voice, without breaking cadence even a little, "Go ahead. Scream if you need to. There will be none to hear you, none to come and make things worse. And it might even make you feel a little better, the pain you are in."

Larewen doesn’t have the energy to scream or cry out. She also doesn’t have the energy to tell Emrith that House Dragana lays dormant. He’ll figure that out soon enough, for as they cross onto that eldritch path, the hovering lights are absent. Even when they cross into the threshold, when he is able to set her down on one of he settees, the dilapidated state of an abandoned House becomes all too obvious. A window, left open, has allowed leaves, dirt, and insects to blow into the manse. There is no familiar smell of Margret’s cooking; no sign of maintenance. Even the wards of the house are dead. Her fingers curl into Emrith’s shirt. “Blood…”

Emrith is somewhat disturbed by the sight of House Dragana in shambles, but it is here he has come, and for now, its less-than-ideal surroundings will have to do. Crouching down next to Larewen, wincing inwardly at the way her body is staining the settee upon which she sprawls, the spell-blade raises his inner left wrist to his lips, bites sharply, then jams the now-bleeding puncture wounds down atop Larewen's lips. "Drink," he commands, and there is steel in his voice. "Never mind decorum, woman. Drink."

Larewen pushes way his wrist with difficult, instead reaching to curl her fingers into his hair. Weakly, she tugs upon him, bringing his face nearer to her own. Her mouth presses to the corner of his mouth, then his jawline, and finally his throat. The touch is warm enough for her to be confused as living, what with the beat of her heart. Her fangs seek to pierce his flesh whilst her free hand seeks to work its way around him, to draw him nearer.

Emrith makes a low, vexed sound in his throat, but lets Larewen draw him nearer, meeting her lips with his own for one brief moment before she trails away across his throat. When her teeth pierce him, the sound of irritation turns to something like frustration, and he tangles a hand in her hair. He does not care that she is dirty, bloodied and ripped wide open. He does not care that, in this moment, she is seeking nourishment from his neck. His body trembles with the proximity of her, the scent of her, with need so great it cannot be voiced except in that low, eager sound in the back of his own throat. He knows, though, that there may be time later. For now, he lets her drink. It is all he can do.