RP:Tipping the Scales of Fate

Part of the Venturil's Bane Arc

This is a Necromancer's Guild RP.

The Creature's Lair, Dark Forest, Vailkrin

The twisting path leading to this dark and cold place is not as it was days ago. Gone are the beasts of the forest who prey on the weak; shattered are the monsters who lurk in shadows waiting to prey upon any creature foolish enough to venture near. For the animals drawn to the stench of blood pouring from Kuzial Stavret all met brutal deaths at his hand. Smaller animals have been killed quickly, the larger more intelligent animals... some were lucky enough to die quick, others appear frozen solid while ebon-hued veins of darkness wash through their body, destroying its life with a savage, inhuman slowness. For the E' et-Nilah Blade has the powerful drow patron in its thrall now, and ever was it the most malevolent of swords. Animals, humans, dwarves or elves... living or the undead... it took sadistic and sentient joy from destroying them all, leaving in its wake an ocean of blood that it knows will soon drown the world in a sanguine tidal wave... As for the drow himself, he sits crosslegged upon the terrible beast who once lived here's body, while its head rests a short distant away. Slowly, so slowly, Kuzial is getting lower and lower as his weight helps to keep blood flowing from the ghastly wound... but whether he even notices this would not be clear.

Tenebrae had been prepared for the difficulties usually present in tracking the drow, whose natural proclivity was leave no mark of his passing at all. So, the Necromancer was thankful, considering the sickness that had overtaken her upon her shocking arrival, that Kuzial had most obligingly left a swathe of bloody corpses and sundered body parts behind him. Indeed, she had to wonder what had transpired in her long absence, that he would become so very blatant.. What was clear to her, though, was that the drow must be at a peak of chagrin and therefore approached with caution. The very thought – caution – sent a shiver of loathing through her armours, which responded with a welter of razored protrusions and a substantial thickening of chitin, which cost her precious speed. “Stop that..” Tene muttered at it, forcing the exoskeletal creature she wore into abeyance. She picked up her pace again, slipping through the dank forest like one of its own shadows, until the end of Kuzial’s warpath was reached, where the drow himself sat upon his latest conquest like a grotesque throne. “You know,” she said, choosing to remain a part of the woods for now, “I once considered you almost good enough to be my mate. But of course, as it happens… I’m not quite your.. type, am I, Patron Stavret?” A hint of mockery, mixed in with bitterness, a dulcet swathe of venom. Could he be in any doubt as to who spoke it?

Kuzial does not move, nor does he react when the words which are filled like always with Tenebrae's undertones of mockery wash over him. For a long time he remains as he is, before words finally come. They are no longer euphonious, nor do they carry the usually lyrical tones that wash through even his most hate-filled words. It is raspy, cold; a whisper that carries too far, a cry that is ignored yet does not stop until the voice finally gives way. "The foolish bitch and the idiot drow. What children you would have had." The sitting patron turns his head, then, and opens a single eye. He stares directly at where Tenebrae so skilfully mixes with the darkness of the forest. Whether he sees her, followed her voice or simply knows... these things are not clear. But again his words come in the same tones as before. "I would have chosen you as my whore were the idiot wise enough to listen to me. Why wage a war on one man, even one as powerful as the Kensai, when you can wage war on a world with someone who turns every slain enemy into an unwilling, undead ally... idiot drow." The dark elf shakes his head in disgust. "He couldn't even prevent you coming back... if he was almost good enough to be your mate, what makes you think you're worth my time?" The words flow are almost contradictory against his earlier ones; the favour of a malevolent sword, it seems, is a fickle as the mercy of a... Tenebrae.

"Children?" Of all the odd things Kuzial had spoken, this was the word that clinched Tenebrae’s suspicion that something had gone very far south within the drow's already unstable - delightfully so, she recalled, with a wisp of near-nostalgia- psyche. There was a long silence, then, in which Tenebrae processed what had been said. It took time; her head still hurt atrociously, and nausea threatened to undo her. Finally, in a tone that indicated she'd gathered both herself and her arrogance once more, she said: "You are not what you were." A shadow sprang up from the foot of a nearby yew and crept toward the drow's grisly perch. It rose, a black effigy of its source as she had been once, its full lips moving, its body poised in a whorish, hip-jutting, scornfully casual pose. "And neither am I. By the by, I must thank you for the lovely gifts. But.. no flowers? I'm disappointed, Patron Stavret. Or should I say.. " Another mocking sound, "Forgive me, but...who are you, again?"

Kuzial ignored the questioning tones of her first reply. He is also entirely oblivious to her internal struggle to defeat the lingering remnants of whatever ailment is caused when you're torn from one world to another in such vicious style. He cares nothing about this. He cares nothing about the woman. Or did he... As she had done, so too does the drow; a struggle made in silence that lasts for just a moment. He exists within the tortured shell of his body, held still by bounds of illusionary magic that his sword so skilfully uses to keep him in thrall. Yet still, the power of his personality, the depths of his own hatred... these things cannot be kept in silence for long. When the shadow did rise, the pose was struck, no hints of his emotions show upon his face. "I am what I am. What was once and what will be matters nothing. Only death matters... perhaps your death?" With the same languid speed as he usually possesses, the dark elf rises from his perch and leaps lightly down onto the ground. His weapon is in his hand, though he didn't draw it out of its enchanted sheathe, and casually, almost lazily, the drow spins it in one hand, before he takes the hilt like a dagger and drives it downward, skewering the beast's head. Without strain he lifts the sword and points it outward in an offering, "A head instead of flowers. One would think you would enjoy this more. Perhaps you have become soft..." Soft... he does remember the parts of her that were soft, and others that were firm... No! He would not return to obscurity and give this idiot drow back its life. He crushes the memories viciously and simply waits, seeing whether she'd take the head or not. He doesn't appear eager to answer her final question at all...

What came slithering out of that conveniently dense patch of forest then was something not even the malevolence imbued within the drow's blade could have considered feasible in the realms of proper existence. Hideously cased in chitin, moving on several dozen sets of spiny legs, the arrow-headed, plated creature swarmed into the clearing like hell's idea of a joke regarding centipedes. Before the drow or his parasite, as it were, could strike, the thing reared up to the vertical. Its underside was concave, containing no organs nor flesh. "Wait," Tene spoke, knowing how quick that sword was. "I have a whim, Kuzial. You might like it." And then Tenebrae left the forest, padding toward him on bare feet, her shadow-mimic collapsing and melting back into the woods. She was just as he'd recall her - in every detail, for nothing hid her from his perusal. "Let me show you how .. soft.. I am capable of being." Her gaze twin beacons of pale green fire, the woman paced with a decadent tread toward her creation, the insectoid shell. If there were no slicing blades to dodge, she'd simply step inside it, as another kind of woman steps into the luxury of a fur coat. The shell-like creature quivered, but did not yet move as it tasted her skin, the salts of the Necromancer.

The E' et-Nilah Blade is an ancient sword. It had been used by the most powerful dark elves since the beginning of their history - some even swore it was the sword of the elvic king... the sword which was used in his betrayal, and in his final moments of life the sword and the swordsman were cursed, bound, undying, undead... imprisoned by the will of its owner while it pushed always for further pain and death. But this is mere legend, what matters more is that throughout its deadly life, one spent in the company of beasts and men who acted like them, never once had it bore witness to such a hideous, grotesque creature. Such surprise at the disgusting thing is all that holds his sword from driving into its center, yet even still Kuzial slashes his blade sideways, causing the head to slide off the sword and roll until it hits a tree, ending up by fate alone to be staring at the two who now stand rather close. Watching almost in deceased mockery, hoping its death would be avenged. Standing there still, Kuzial watches Tenebrae walk forward, looking as she always does. He feels within him a desire to reach out and take her, to dominate her; to make her his whore. Yet he does not, for the creature which so unnerved him is treated like nothing as she steps forward into it like a loving embrace. He is left without words for a long time, before he manages to speak in his rasping voice, "Your.. whim?"

Tenebrae smiled. She smiled, and for that brief moment it seemed the world was brighter, a little more filled with hope. She smiled, and it shone upon the drow and sword, while the chitin-beast enclosed her like a glove to a hand yet more snugly, and more.. in its own sick way .. lovingly. Every finger, her delicate feet, even the creature's peculiar arrowed head folded over hers so that she wore a hawk-like helm. But worst was the way her right arm bristled, the chitin springing razors of alchemically altered bone free of itself, vicious hooks and barbs.. the wargauntlet of the Nobility, the Empusai. "My whim," said the Necromancer, still smiling.. though that smile was lengthening now into a maw, its teeth like needles, "Is to demonstrate how close I like to keep my lovers," and here, she stroked the armour tenderly, though her gaze did not waver from sight of Kuzial. "This one lasted a very long time. He wanted to be with me, always. It was a wish I granted him..." her jaw unslung, her tongue bifurcated as he watched, and it flickered like fire. "That, dear.. whatever you are.. is the extent of my most magnanimous kindness."

Kuzial feels the strange power of Tenebrae's smile; it is such stark contrast to the beast that she truly was. He watches it for as long as it takes for the grotesque creature to envelope her entirely, to twist and turn, break and be reborn, until she stands wearing an armour that none, not even the most evil, twisted gods, could ever find beautiful. It is a contrast in and of itself; a sharpness that grates upon the nerves like sharpened nails down a dry chalkboard. At once he wants to flee, to fight, to do anything he can to no longer be looking at the necromancer. Yet he... cannot. Whether it's her will that holds him, or his own morbid curiosity, he doesn't look away, nor does he attempt to kill her. He watches her turn from beatific to horrific until he speaks. Much to his credit, his voice remains as it was; raspy and cold. No betrayal at all of his internal turmoil. "Then we are alike. For I too keep those who loved me close... so close... here..." he taps his chest, "... they all live. Screaming for their torment to end, their tears and pain like the sweetest of wines. Like you, Tenebrae, I grant those who love me their wishes too." He smiles at her a dark smile, one impossible to emulate by any man born of woman. "Yet none will grant a wish for me... will you, lady? Was I not a lover once? Will you grant me a wish?"

Tenebrae's eyes were fonts of simmering flame, green as the gases that rose from the swamps of her beloved Shadowside. She flipped that horrific gauntlet, a blatantly dismissive gesture. "I expect this is where you intend to impart some sort of witticism and then attempt to lop my head off," she said, each word a wasp, "Do tell me you won't be quite -that- predictable, Patron? And here was I, so thrilled about your lovely flowers." The head of the beast, where it rolled nearby, was kicked at. "Please, do not be so short-sighted as every other man who craves power has proved. Except for one.." Her body shifted, subtly. The gauntlet appeared to be salivating, or sweating.. "Before you make your wish, Kuzial Stavret," the name was as subtly enunciated, the Empusai charm imbuing the sound, a siren's song of desire. "Consider carefully what we may achieve together." Tenebrae paused, pursed her lips. "In entirely separate bodies, I mean. I never have liked crowds."

Kuzial lifts his hand in a parody of her own gesture, dismissing her words for the foolish sounds he thought they were. "Do you think if I wanted to kill you, you would still be alive now? Do you think I would become a slave to you for the sake of power? Do not be foolish, lest you wish your head to be resting beside that creature’s, and your eyes the ones that accuse me in death. Such a sweet expression..." He shakes his head, then. "In fact, foolish necromancer, before you could grant me my wish, it would be you who held my most beautiful sword." He runs a finger along its razor sharp edge, cutting into his skin with vicious ease, yet with no apparent discomfort. Blood dripping now from the limb, it returns to his side. "I only ask you slay the demon within me; free me entirely. Kill me with my own sword so I can be born again. And only then, Tenebrae, can we achieve true greatness... we will sit upon thrones forged from the bones of a thousand dead men.. but first I need to be free. I never tried to stop you returning... he cannot say the same..." The strength of her word's charm almost breaks through to the patron within. But the sword silences him again... it would be he who ruled this world, not a foolish elf.

Tenebrae was very still for a time, only her cheek flinching and that forked, red-pink tongue flicking against her lower lip. It was clear she was undecided, and wisely untrusting of the being that was directing its consciousness through the drow. Her maw shrank to something more befitting a woman, and her chitin-plate quit its slavering. Finally, she spoke, no evidence of manipulation in the tones of it: "You speak true. I saw him, myself, the way he sacrificed.. what he sacrificed.. to stop my emergence." She offered him a bitter laugh, "If only he wasn't too late eh? In any case, you are strong, and I would accept your offer. But.." she trod back, a step, two steps, and the gauntlet's fore-razor was jabbed toward the bloodied earth between them. "Leave it there, point down. If I am to have the.. honour.. of holding it in my grasp, I would have it on my own terms and no other."

Kuzial cannot even begin to hide the malignant smile that forms on his face. The drow is handsome, all dark elves are, but when he wears that smile he is as ugly as sin. "I have no reason to lie to you, Tenebrae. Nor to trick you. I do not want to sit upon that throne with my eyes always darting to the shadows for your dagger." Not that there is any force on Hollow that could stop him looking for her daggers. But still, the sentiment is there. "It will be as you say." In one motion that briefly betrays his skill as a swordsman, the weapon is reversed again and driven into the earth between them. It quivers almost of its own violation as it remains there, and with another dark smile Kuzial takes a backwards step. Usually, the sword would kill anyone who held it who's not a drow. But its own bindings would stop this... she could take it without harm, if she wanted (if it could in fact even kill her through her armour). And as another backward step is taken by the dark elf, he begins to hone his concentration on the weapon. His plan is for her to take it, then himself to flee back to its confines while she kills Kuzial. Then, and only then, would it take true control of his body. The gamble being, if she killed him with the blade before he had time to return to it, it would be him who was destroyed, not the drow... leaving Kuzial in control once more, if he survived... That is the risk he takes... but there is no path to power that doesn't have a few risks involved. And though he spoke none of this out loud, he had the distinct feeling Tenebrae would know the truth of what he seeks, and the decision of who lives would truly be hers to make.

Tenebrae possessed the paranoia of a cat in a hunting kennel, so wary was her step toward the blade's grim hilt. Of course, it was the gauntleted hand she used to reach for it - its blades adjusted themselves with a reluctant click and slither to accommodate the grip. A second's hesitation spent then, her eyes burning green into Kuzial's singular, red-filled socket. There was something of madness in the look, a flash of insane triumph - she grabbed the sword, turned, spun about, and... ran. Could it be? Was she -stealing- the sword? One pace, two, swift as her Empusai flesh could make her, strengthened by the armour that had, upon a time, once been a man. A glimpse over her shoulder, and she broke stride, forward momentum ceasing with a grind of heels into dirt, and with the snatched artefact crossed over her chest, she leapt, flipped – backward. In mid-air, her head filled with screaming, endless screaming, as her armour peeled back from her belly and chest, she poised The E' et-Nilah Blade for the necessary strike. Less than five mortal heartbeats had passed, when her scissoring legs landed her before the Drow Patron – and, if she had not miscalculated, with her back so snugly against his front as to almost seem .. lewd. "Foolish.." sighed Tenebrae, as the terrible weapon sliced up through her own midriff, barely snicking her spine after passing through redundant organs, her hands slipping on its blood-wet blade when she drove it straight through Kuzial, too. Pray she had the angle right and did not pierce his heart...If all was not madness and mishap, if all had gone as she'd wished, the two were pinned together for however long the powers of gravity and will would allow it.

Kuzial snaps his eye wide open as she runs with his blade. Was the woman truly so stupid that she thinks she could steal the powerful sword and use it as her own? No. She paused, and before he could control his thoughts the woman has spun so eloquently through the air, stopping only as her back rested in a brief pause that any stumbler by would think was a lover's embrace... until they looked close enough to see the forsaken damnation of both drow and necromancer. He screams a single cry, drowning out her word, before he feels the weapon, coated now with her own blood, cleave through his chest. He can feel it... him... Kuzial... the sword... the necromancer... he could feel them all. As if all the paths of their horror filled lives were laid bare before this creation the three had become, held still in the macabre sword's embrace. Unnoticed blood pours as thoughts shift and spin; for a moment he is Kuzial, psychotic with an ocean of rage, then the sword with its undying dreams of conquest, then Tenebrae, with her sarcasm and wit that cannot hide from his eyes the truth of who she is... of what she is... The blade is hungry now, so hungry; it wanted souls to fill its void as the three stand there as one, until whispered words would reach Tenebrae's ear, mixing so fluidly with the oneness that has been given to them this day. "Tell us... me... before we die, Tenebrae... which of us did you want to live?" Who exactly speaks these words isn't clear, though it's clear her own life is included in the question. But whether it is Kuzial or the malevolent spirit of the sword... it is impossible yet to tell... but whomever did ask must surely know as they continue to stand in a growing pool of blood, refusing to give in to the powers of gravity as the Scales of Fate hang still, waiting to see who, or perhaps what, would survive this deadly embrace...

One small hand was lifted free of the blade, its jointed armour dropping off with a sodden 'plop' to join the blood on it with the blood on the ground below. Bare, then, and cool to his touch, Tenebrae reached back to lay her palm against the drow's dark cheek, smooth but for any scar he carried there. He would not see it, but she smiled again, not the sunny guile of a charlatan, nor the sly grin of a predator. This was almost sweet, a small expression of the Empusai's happiness in that moment. Then she twisted the sword, and said, "Whichever of you will suffer most for living. I dare say that may be Stavret.. " Oh, her own pain was excruciating, her own largely stolen fluids mingling as swiftly as Kuzial's with the dark forest’s dirt. She had her revenge for his being late to stop her arrival, and for the shame of her perceived rejection, the use he'd made of her... All of it, avenged, in that small moment of agony. Her anger spilled like mortal blood, impotent in its release.

Kuzial can feel... no... he can taste her anger... such burning contrast to the cool hand that rested on his cheek. Her words are almost drowned out as the sword begins to twist, snapping one of his ribs like a twig, the resounding 'crack' echoing through the dead forest the dark elf desecrated. He lets out a stifled groan, before he moves his hand around and places it on her stomach, where the armour parted for the blade to stab through. Almost delicately he traces a pattern with his fingers over her flesh. His own hand is cold; the chill of approaching death, yet the gesture seems as loving as her own was, even as it contrasts so starkly with his words, "I.. always watched for daggers in my own back, lady darkness... I was foolish not to watch for swords from your own." The drow's hand moves then as it wraps around the blade of his sword, before he gives it a savage twist of his own, causing his already horrendous injury to become worse and worse. "That, bitch, is for breaking my insignia..." He twists it one more time, "And that... is for... leaving this world without first... a goodbye. The paths to power are many... you should have known... ours would split... not... forever..."

Tenebrae's mouth was wide with a scream that had no sound but hung in appalling silence. Pain.. was there ever such pain? She thought not, almost euphoric with it - until a fresh wave slammed into her as the ground slams into falling flesh. By the time Kuzial was finished with own revenge, she was barely recognisable. Speech does not come easy to the Empusai when not wearing their prettier guises, and it was a long, vicious hiss and a consonant gurgle that fell from her lips as she threw her weight forward, dragging the accursed sword free first of Kuzial and then of herself, flinging it where - she did not care. Tenebrae swivelled, unable to keep herself upright, the wargauntlet clutching her belly where life was leaving her in cool, red splashes. The face she turned to him was a nightmare of teeth and corrugated features, part bat, part canid, though the woman was still visible as the underpinning to the whole. "Do not.. speak to me..." her pierced lung was whistling, redundant as it was to one who needed breath only for speech. "... of goodbyes.. Kuzial, for you and I.. " her chortle was wet, and spattered crimson to the air. "... we have shared.. so much.. Shared.. blood." She cackled, an awful sound. "And the blood.... oh the blood.. really is the life."

Kuzial swears in his languid language as Tenebrae tears herself free, breaking their dark embrace and almost causing him to fall to his knees. But he would not. He could almost see those scales still poised - he could feel upon the air that the fates would decide much this day by the actions of these two, yet the choices to make were their own. They had to be - of all the people in this dark, forsaken world, no others would be as ill-fitted to a puppeteer's strings as these two, even if it was the Gods themselves who dictated their actions. Blood pools from the drow, the wound was a mortal one, and as the sword is slung so carelessly away, Kuzial's gaze never once leaves the demonic Tenebrae. He matched her hissing look with one of his own; deranged with a psychotic force of will as powerful as any mage's. "We... are as one... or were..." The drow feels the urge to walk over and reclaim his sword. Part of him wants to throw it into the acidic maw of a black dragon, but another part of him... a lingering part... wants to lift it into an embrace. "Blood of my blood, life of my life..." He takes half a step forward then, not afraid of her. "But we... Tenebrae... we are not life. I am an ender of life while you so often dance with death..." He sways, his will giving in to a body that can no longer defy itself. But for a moment longer he remains upright. "Yet still... you saved me..." He thinks. No, she did... or did she fail... "So we are... once again..." He stops to spit a bloody wad onto the ground, beside the head of the creature killed what seems an age ago. "As we are..." He wanted to carry on, his hatred of the woman as well as his desire and gratitude demanded he remain upright as long as she did... longer than she did... but he could not... His last words and thoughts are lost as his legs finally give way and he collapses onto the ground, consciousness fled, blood still pouring, as the remnants of his life struggles to remain within this world.

Tenebrae crawled over to him, partially because of her wounds and the abhorrent weakness they engendered; partially because her body, in its revolt toward survival, was rejecting its feeblest parts and striving for strength – and humanity was not high on that agenda. Her mouth was thick with blood, dismay, and the shifting mass of her tongue but she managed to utter, "Bastard..." before the capacity to form words left her altogether. The bestial taint of her new heritage was taking over. She did not have a lot of time, and by the look of Stavret's wounds, neither did he. Fate, somewhere, was laughing its addled head off.. Tenebrae’s jaw once more unslung revealing a viper's pit of teeth which snapped down upon the wrist of her one bared hand. Little trickled out, there being not much left in her now. But what she had would be... his. Forcing the slashed limb to Kuzial’s mouth, the Necromancer fed him. Her thrall. Not vampire.. yet. Not Empusai, either, though if anyone was worthy of that state in this world, it was him. Whatever his state, her soiled blood would stave off true death if only it was not too late. White as snow, whiter than the moon, Tenebrae let him have what she herself could ill afford. Stiffening, chilling, the monster gazed upon the monstrous until sight too failed her and the world was nought but Darkness.

Kuzial feels within the depths of his agony the warmth of tainted blood upon his own bloodied lips. He is unconscious, his mind fleeing from the pain and seeking sanctuary in the darkness... yet even this is denied to him by the necromancer... the Empusai... He had tried to deny her access to this world for fear she was a beast, and yet it is that beast within her which fends off the cold clutches of Death. He can almost feel the fingers stroking his flesh, willing it to give out so another soul can be claimed, another name removed from the Book of Life. Yet her touch, her taint... her blood... it was stronger than the wants of a capricious deity. The blood from his wound seems to slow, as if his body had only just realized how precious his vitae truly is... yet throughout it all he doesn't properly wake... and even as his heart beats it final beat, giving birth to an unlife of his own... a bind to this torturous woman who saved him... he knows this damnation was always his fate. He did not betray Tenebrae, not entirely; but her perception of his betrayal meant that this path was inevitable. He sensed it, he tried to stop it.. and he failed... what would come from this isn't yet known as his mind returns to its darkness, along side her own, but within the darkest depths of Kuzial's damned soul there is a spark of gratitude. He knows now that this new path is their own, and Hollow had best be prepared, for the name that was denied to death just moments ago will ensure that the cold bastard is never again left wanting for souls to claim... the world had best beware...