Lexatives - Flushing out Evil 25/02
Mar 9, 2020 23:15:18 GMT
Ghesh, Ser Baine Cinderwood 🔥🌼, and 1 more like this
Post by Markas Virnala on Mar 9, 2020 23:15:18 GMT
The Half-Elf was stressed. He had seen his family off and now he was worried. He had spent some time drinking with Ghesh, trying to distract himself but the only thing he wanted was to run after them. Not that running there was really an option. They may say it’s paved with good intentions but there sure isn't a road that leads straight down to the Hells.
Now, Markas sits in his room, blankly staring at the wall, rhythmically clenching his fists as he tries to find some normalcy in the tumultuous mess of images and sounds replaying in his head… This being the first real chance he has had to reflect on his week. After the mess at Stoneleaf.
He wasn’t particularly fond of the arrangements in place for that excursion but two of his friends had already died in those mines. If he could do something to stop more deaths, he was obviously going to go along. So he had studied the contract from OMTC, scrutinising every detail, even preparing his own map based on the reports made within it. There was a startling amount of unknowns involved, especially given how many people had been in there now, making the whole affair unsettling. A feeling not helped by the appearance of the nightmarish horses that attacked them in the night on the way there. Seems Serpentine has been up to something shady but that was a concern for another day. There were still the deals that Sunday and Baine had made that were more pressing in his mind.
Markas stands and starts to pace the room, shaking the ache out of his hands, reliving the journey through the mines with each step…
Heret had guided them through the maze of tunnels more confidently than he had anticipated. When the small group Heret had brought together, consisting of Pieni, Serpentine and himself, had run into the regiment from OCF led by Varis and Baine, he half expected teh OCF to assume control of the situation but even Varis seemed content letting Heret lead the way, so long as it didn't contradict his own agenda. Luckily they had the same goal as us, stopping Lex.
Lex. He had been an interesting one. So polite and calm. He had not been what the monk had expected to see. It wasn’t a comforting thought that Lex also seemed able to always see them. Walking through the tunnels and Chess room, descending the stairs, all the while the genial Lex commenting and responding to the groups vocalised queries. Right up until they reached the door to his private chambers, then he sounded concerned, but even so, didn’t intervene to stop his would be killers from entering, even offering advice to Heret trying to disable the poison trap on the door. Such an odd…. Whatever he was.
Markas walks to the window and leans out, taking a deep breath, hoping some fresh air might clear his head. It does not. Outside, the city was still bustling with activity. Even with the sun starting to fall towards the horizon everything still seemed so... alive….
Alive.
They were lucky to be alive. Lex had been more than they had bargained for. Hestor, the ancient grief stricken Paladin under his control was waiting for them all as they entered the stone hall behind the curtain in his private study. Baine and Varis tore across the room to put him down, but he wasn’t alone...
Defeated in trying to find something outside to take his mind from this, Markas falls back heavily on the bed, the chaos of their fight coming to him in flashes and moments. He can’t help but wonder if it was a side effect of that potion he drank there. Then again, maybe he just didn't want to relive it. Like it or not, the visions still intruded their way in...
Lex’s calm and polite voice reverberating around them.The shadowy figures emerging from the stone pillars. The spray of blood on his face as he drives his palm into the Yuan-ti. The searing pain as a blazing inferno erupts around him. Varis falling to the ground in the throws of combat. Baine looming over him fumbling with a potion... He wanted to help but his feet were already taking him to the Halfling, away from the fire. He remembers pummelling them, beating them into the dust from where they came… then the scream. Baine’s anguish cutting through the chaos in the room. The sight of Varis’ bloody body, brutally carved by Hestor...
Why did he stop? He was right there…
Why didn’t I help him? I could have made it over there… No. I was trying to stop the shades. The monk Lex had controlled was enough trouble for Heret, whatever that halfling shade was doing needed to stop too, otherwise who knows how much worse it could have been… maybe Baine would’ve…
He stops the thought there. Baine had been cut up pretty bad as it was, physically and emotionally, but he was still here. The monk had tried talking to the Baine last night but he didn’t seem ready. The loss is still too fresh. And now he was off again, this time with Sunday, very literally off to Hell.
I should have gone with them.
She asked me to stay
What if she doesn’t come back?
What if I didn’t?
She wants to save everyone
Don’t I?
This incessant nagging was not something Markas was used to, not from himself. He needed to keep busy. Running had not helped, neither did his normal exercises. He wasn’t even sure why this particular excursion was bothering him so much, they all went running off doing this kind of thing on an almost weekly basis
Yes I do, It’s because she likes to help people. Varis did too and now he’s gone. I don’t want her to go away... This worrying is making me sick.
Sick...
Finally, the look of concern that has been etched into his face changes. The aimless wandering of a restless mind latching onto an idea.
The sun has long gone down and the Mirror is quiet as he walks back into his room, the usual noise and music dying for the night as everyone either sleeps or falls into a drunken stupor. But that suits him, it was always easier to reach when it was quiet. It may have been late in the day, but thankfully some things are available day or night, as long as you look in the right places. It had taken the monk some time, asking around a few places before someone finally believed he wasn’t trying to catch them out but he got what he was after. Returning from his small shopping trip, Markas sits cross legged on the floor, facing the open window, placing a small vial of a dark liquid in front of him, almost ceremoniously in its careful placement. This was probably a stupid idea but he needed something productive to do. He just needed to calm down first. With one last lingering look at the darkness outside his window, wondering how his new family were doing, Markas closes his eyes and begins to meditate.
He feels the static energy in the air first as his hair on his neck stands on end, then the wind that circles around him. A low rumble starts to form, echoing from all directions that is suddenly cut off by a flash and a thunderous crash of lightning as he opens his eyes to a small circular room of dark stone, etched with scenes of panoramic landscapes, some he recognised from his travels, others seemingly fabricated, almost all besieged by storm clouds. In front of him, down a small set of steps, a path leads through a long corridor he knows will come to the circular Domed room he first found here, a dark blue carpet trimmed in white running the length of the corridor. To either side of this and circling the room around him is a pool of deep blue water, buffeted by the winds into a persistent turbulence.
Looking up from the raised platform he is sitting on, he sees the small storm hanging in the room above him where it always was. The storm outside now louder and closer than it was the last time he came here, this one seemed to be feeding from it somehow. The occasional flash and spark was common enough but that last one was much more than he’d seen or felt before. Looking past the roiling storm, he notices the scorched stone on the ceiling where the bolt of lightning had struck out, like it was trying to escape.
This needed to stop.
Markas stands and walks confidently down the steps out into the corridor, the dark stone being replaced with the polished white walls and grey floor matching the heart of this place. As he walks, he glances out the tall windows along this walkway to see the unending storm outside in the throws of its tempestuous tantrum, punctuated by the flashes of lightning tearing through its dense forms.
The corridor ends in a large carved archway, opening into the large domed room again. The archway, previously smooth stone, is now intricately carved in swirling patterns occasionally highlighted in wandering traces of blue and white light, matching the others spaced around the room. Markas pauses a few feet in, glancing to his right at the next archway. Even from here he can see the newest painting to find its home on the walls there, the purple skin tones and view of his room back in the mirror are unmistakable. He goes to step towards it but his wandering mind is brought back to focus again by another ear splitting boom as the storm continues outside. He turns instead, striding purposefully round the room to his left deliberately avoiding the painted corridor, his footsteps masked by the constant rumble working its way in from outside.
The monk circles the room, passing three more archways, the second of which surrounds a simple and worn wooden door with a brass handle, the others containing blank stone walls, empty spaces where a way through hasn’t opened up yet. Between each arch, a small circular dais has risen out of the stone floor, one of the newer changes he has noticed here. He still wasn’t exactly sure what they were for but no doubt it would come to him soon enough. As he reaches the opposite side of the room, he turns into another open archway into a long corridor.
This particular corridor is featureless, no doors or paintings line the walls, nor windows to the outside like the others had, leading in a straight line until it opens up into a large cylindrical room. The stone floor continues where the corridor ends, leading out into the open like a bridge towards the centre, the floor and ceiling of the room disappearing into darkness. In the centre of the room is a massive column of light, stretching from the depths up into the void above.
He had spent most of his life focusing on this, his inner self, the energy coursing through his body. But this is much closer than he had ever got in all his time in the monastery practicing and this proximity to it is disorientating. His first attempt had proven too much and he had shocked himself out of his meditation. Now though, he needed to retake control again and stop the panic that had set in since Sunday and Baine left. He walks forwards, slowly, into the light and takes a moment to listen again, following the flow of energy, feeling his way along the flow until he finds the erratic patterns in his mind, then, with a slight nudge, pushes them back into place, immediately feeling a physical loosening and calmness flood over him, as the storm outside finally calms down.
Back in his room in the Gilded Mirror, Markas’ physical form lets out a deep sigh.
Now the hard part. Calming his mind was one thing but neutralising something in his body was something he had never tried before. He isn’t absolutely sure this will work and Sunday would probably scold him but he has to try, especially now she has given him the idea. He picks up the bottle and drinks the thick liquid.
Back inside the column of light, Markas takes a deep breath as he feels the thick liquid burn his throat and waits for the effects to take hold. With a gut wrenching lurch, it begins. He feels like his body is rejecting everything in it. His hands shake and go numb as an ache creeps up his arms, sweat forming on the skin. His chest feels like it’s being crushed and his vision starts to fade, a black fog engulfing his consciousness. He grits his teeth wills himself through the pain, trying to not lose his focus on the light… then he sees it. The break in the flow, the change he was looking for, like a single strand of jet black hair among a mane of brilliant white.
He throws out a hand, willing himself to maintain control, redirecting the flow to cut off the intrusion, segregating it from the rest and bringing it closer to him, holding it still before it can spread. He struggles with it but after a strained few minutes, he finally has it pulled from the rest, a twisted black sickening mess trying to escape the hold he has on it. He continues to hold it until the writhing form finally starts to slow down. Channeling the Ki he has left into his hand, he places it on his own stomach, expelling his energy inwards to cleanse himself of this and watches the light slowly dispel the form in front of him, a wave of release washing over him as the poison is eradicated.
Happy with his progress, Markas opens his eyes to see Sunday perfectly silhouetted in the window, looking down at him, a soft smile on her face. Behind her, the sunlight of a new day is rising.
[Write up and Level up Narrative. thanks Sunday for the prompts]
Now, Markas sits in his room, blankly staring at the wall, rhythmically clenching his fists as he tries to find some normalcy in the tumultuous mess of images and sounds replaying in his head… This being the first real chance he has had to reflect on his week. After the mess at Stoneleaf.
He wasn’t particularly fond of the arrangements in place for that excursion but two of his friends had already died in those mines. If he could do something to stop more deaths, he was obviously going to go along. So he had studied the contract from OMTC, scrutinising every detail, even preparing his own map based on the reports made within it. There was a startling amount of unknowns involved, especially given how many people had been in there now, making the whole affair unsettling. A feeling not helped by the appearance of the nightmarish horses that attacked them in the night on the way there. Seems Serpentine has been up to something shady but that was a concern for another day. There were still the deals that Sunday and Baine had made that were more pressing in his mind.
Markas stands and starts to pace the room, shaking the ache out of his hands, reliving the journey through the mines with each step…
Heret had guided them through the maze of tunnels more confidently than he had anticipated. When the small group Heret had brought together, consisting of Pieni, Serpentine and himself, had run into the regiment from OCF led by Varis and Baine, he half expected teh OCF to assume control of the situation but even Varis seemed content letting Heret lead the way, so long as it didn't contradict his own agenda. Luckily they had the same goal as us, stopping Lex.
Lex. He had been an interesting one. So polite and calm. He had not been what the monk had expected to see. It wasn’t a comforting thought that Lex also seemed able to always see them. Walking through the tunnels and Chess room, descending the stairs, all the while the genial Lex commenting and responding to the groups vocalised queries. Right up until they reached the door to his private chambers, then he sounded concerned, but even so, didn’t intervene to stop his would be killers from entering, even offering advice to Heret trying to disable the poison trap on the door. Such an odd…. Whatever he was.
Markas walks to the window and leans out, taking a deep breath, hoping some fresh air might clear his head. It does not. Outside, the city was still bustling with activity. Even with the sun starting to fall towards the horizon everything still seemed so... alive….
Alive.
They were lucky to be alive. Lex had been more than they had bargained for. Hestor, the ancient grief stricken Paladin under his control was waiting for them all as they entered the stone hall behind the curtain in his private study. Baine and Varis tore across the room to put him down, but he wasn’t alone...
Defeated in trying to find something outside to take his mind from this, Markas falls back heavily on the bed, the chaos of their fight coming to him in flashes and moments. He can’t help but wonder if it was a side effect of that potion he drank there. Then again, maybe he just didn't want to relive it. Like it or not, the visions still intruded their way in...
Lex’s calm and polite voice reverberating around them.The shadowy figures emerging from the stone pillars. The spray of blood on his face as he drives his palm into the Yuan-ti. The searing pain as a blazing inferno erupts around him. Varis falling to the ground in the throws of combat. Baine looming over him fumbling with a potion... He wanted to help but his feet were already taking him to the Halfling, away from the fire. He remembers pummelling them, beating them into the dust from where they came… then the scream. Baine’s anguish cutting through the chaos in the room. The sight of Varis’ bloody body, brutally carved by Hestor...
Why did he stop? He was right there…
Why didn’t I help him? I could have made it over there… No. I was trying to stop the shades. The monk Lex had controlled was enough trouble for Heret, whatever that halfling shade was doing needed to stop too, otherwise who knows how much worse it could have been… maybe Baine would’ve…
He stops the thought there. Baine had been cut up pretty bad as it was, physically and emotionally, but he was still here. The monk had tried talking to the Baine last night but he didn’t seem ready. The loss is still too fresh. And now he was off again, this time with Sunday, very literally off to Hell.
I should have gone with them.
She asked me to stay
What if she doesn’t come back?
What if I didn’t?
She wants to save everyone
Don’t I?
This incessant nagging was not something Markas was used to, not from himself. He needed to keep busy. Running had not helped, neither did his normal exercises. He wasn’t even sure why this particular excursion was bothering him so much, they all went running off doing this kind of thing on an almost weekly basis
Yes I do, It’s because she likes to help people. Varis did too and now he’s gone. I don’t want her to go away... This worrying is making me sick.
Sick...
Finally, the look of concern that has been etched into his face changes. The aimless wandering of a restless mind latching onto an idea.
The sun has long gone down and the Mirror is quiet as he walks back into his room, the usual noise and music dying for the night as everyone either sleeps or falls into a drunken stupor. But that suits him, it was always easier to reach when it was quiet. It may have been late in the day, but thankfully some things are available day or night, as long as you look in the right places. It had taken the monk some time, asking around a few places before someone finally believed he wasn’t trying to catch them out but he got what he was after. Returning from his small shopping trip, Markas sits cross legged on the floor, facing the open window, placing a small vial of a dark liquid in front of him, almost ceremoniously in its careful placement. This was probably a stupid idea but he needed something productive to do. He just needed to calm down first. With one last lingering look at the darkness outside his window, wondering how his new family were doing, Markas closes his eyes and begins to meditate.
He feels the static energy in the air first as his hair on his neck stands on end, then the wind that circles around him. A low rumble starts to form, echoing from all directions that is suddenly cut off by a flash and a thunderous crash of lightning as he opens his eyes to a small circular room of dark stone, etched with scenes of panoramic landscapes, some he recognised from his travels, others seemingly fabricated, almost all besieged by storm clouds. In front of him, down a small set of steps, a path leads through a long corridor he knows will come to the circular Domed room he first found here, a dark blue carpet trimmed in white running the length of the corridor. To either side of this and circling the room around him is a pool of deep blue water, buffeted by the winds into a persistent turbulence.
Looking up from the raised platform he is sitting on, he sees the small storm hanging in the room above him where it always was. The storm outside now louder and closer than it was the last time he came here, this one seemed to be feeding from it somehow. The occasional flash and spark was common enough but that last one was much more than he’d seen or felt before. Looking past the roiling storm, he notices the scorched stone on the ceiling where the bolt of lightning had struck out, like it was trying to escape.
This needed to stop.
Markas stands and walks confidently down the steps out into the corridor, the dark stone being replaced with the polished white walls and grey floor matching the heart of this place. As he walks, he glances out the tall windows along this walkway to see the unending storm outside in the throws of its tempestuous tantrum, punctuated by the flashes of lightning tearing through its dense forms.
The corridor ends in a large carved archway, opening into the large domed room again. The archway, previously smooth stone, is now intricately carved in swirling patterns occasionally highlighted in wandering traces of blue and white light, matching the others spaced around the room. Markas pauses a few feet in, glancing to his right at the next archway. Even from here he can see the newest painting to find its home on the walls there, the purple skin tones and view of his room back in the mirror are unmistakable. He goes to step towards it but his wandering mind is brought back to focus again by another ear splitting boom as the storm continues outside. He turns instead, striding purposefully round the room to his left deliberately avoiding the painted corridor, his footsteps masked by the constant rumble working its way in from outside.
The monk circles the room, passing three more archways, the second of which surrounds a simple and worn wooden door with a brass handle, the others containing blank stone walls, empty spaces where a way through hasn’t opened up yet. Between each arch, a small circular dais has risen out of the stone floor, one of the newer changes he has noticed here. He still wasn’t exactly sure what they were for but no doubt it would come to him soon enough. As he reaches the opposite side of the room, he turns into another open archway into a long corridor.
This particular corridor is featureless, no doors or paintings line the walls, nor windows to the outside like the others had, leading in a straight line until it opens up into a large cylindrical room. The stone floor continues where the corridor ends, leading out into the open like a bridge towards the centre, the floor and ceiling of the room disappearing into darkness. In the centre of the room is a massive column of light, stretching from the depths up into the void above.
He had spent most of his life focusing on this, his inner self, the energy coursing through his body. But this is much closer than he had ever got in all his time in the monastery practicing and this proximity to it is disorientating. His first attempt had proven too much and he had shocked himself out of his meditation. Now though, he needed to retake control again and stop the panic that had set in since Sunday and Baine left. He walks forwards, slowly, into the light and takes a moment to listen again, following the flow of energy, feeling his way along the flow until he finds the erratic patterns in his mind, then, with a slight nudge, pushes them back into place, immediately feeling a physical loosening and calmness flood over him, as the storm outside finally calms down.
Back in his room in the Gilded Mirror, Markas’ physical form lets out a deep sigh.
Now the hard part. Calming his mind was one thing but neutralising something in his body was something he had never tried before. He isn’t absolutely sure this will work and Sunday would probably scold him but he has to try, especially now she has given him the idea. He picks up the bottle and drinks the thick liquid.
Back inside the column of light, Markas takes a deep breath as he feels the thick liquid burn his throat and waits for the effects to take hold. With a gut wrenching lurch, it begins. He feels like his body is rejecting everything in it. His hands shake and go numb as an ache creeps up his arms, sweat forming on the skin. His chest feels like it’s being crushed and his vision starts to fade, a black fog engulfing his consciousness. He grits his teeth wills himself through the pain, trying to not lose his focus on the light… then he sees it. The break in the flow, the change he was looking for, like a single strand of jet black hair among a mane of brilliant white.
He throws out a hand, willing himself to maintain control, redirecting the flow to cut off the intrusion, segregating it from the rest and bringing it closer to him, holding it still before it can spread. He struggles with it but after a strained few minutes, he finally has it pulled from the rest, a twisted black sickening mess trying to escape the hold he has on it. He continues to hold it until the writhing form finally starts to slow down. Channeling the Ki he has left into his hand, he places it on his own stomach, expelling his energy inwards to cleanse himself of this and watches the light slowly dispel the form in front of him, a wave of release washing over him as the poison is eradicated.
Happy with his progress, Markas opens his eyes to see Sunday perfectly silhouetted in the window, looking down at him, a soft smile on her face. Behind her, the sunlight of a new day is rising.
[Write up and Level up Narrative. thanks Sunday for the prompts]
