By Arm the Chance Part 1 - Varis (16/6/20)
Jun 17, 2020 12:06:49 GMT
Ser Baine Cinderwood 🔥🌼, Markas Virnala, and 4 more like this
Post by Varis/G'Lorth/Sundilar on Jun 17, 2020 12:06:49 GMT
It had taken them an hour or so to find their way from where Oriloki dropped them to the bottom of Cowards Way. Beneath a bruised and burning sky, the double row of twisted iron trees wound its way up to a cliff overlooking the river, a dark reflection of some civic boulevard.
Ignoring the fanciful bazar in the distance, they had searched for one of the ‘trees’ more sheltered from general view - an amusing precaution, considering what was to transpire - and Baine set about freeing the martyred knight affixed to its vicious boughs. The stirges had been scared off and the towering Morning Knight had just begun to break off the branches holding the prisoner in place when a cry went up - first from the armoured corpse Baine was freeing, then from every other crucified creature on the Way, and from the mouth of every hellish vulture circling the condemned. An ululating wail that turned their marrow to ice.
The sound of hooves rang out against the blistering surface of the magma wadi, the Hellknight coming to stop before the tree Baine was perched in.
“Who are you? Why do you defy Zariel’s authority?”
He had wanted to respond, ought really to have made himself the knight’s focus, but the words had caught in his throat. He could not take his eyes from the black iron plates, the long, vicious lance. It took all his strength not to tear his own harness from his back. Instead it was Taffeta who stood, who faced Zariel’s lieutenant down. Taffeta, who wished only to protect her family and her friends. The sight of the diminutive woman staring down a fallen angel - for such he was, there could be no mistaking the twisted grace - would have been comical if it were not so terrifying.
I was a fool to ever think that woman a coward.
The battle was joined, just as they had known it must be - Sunday and Baine attacking the knight and his guards as Pieni continued to weave a spell from the cover of a large stone. As two of Zariel’s hunters joined the fray, Varis finally spurred himself to action, charging along the rise to meet the first of them.
“I know who you are. I’ve been looking for you for weeks.”
The Orthon’s words hissed from empty air where moments before it had stood.
“And now you have found me. You will wish you had not.”
Even as he spoke the words he felt empty. This place was draining him, leeching away the tenuous calm he had managed to find since his return to Daring. Shaking his head, he pushed down the rising panic, as Sunday and Baine traded devastating blows with the knight and Taffeta annihilated his entourage.
Again, both hunters vanished into thin air. Closing his eyes, he reached for the small island of calm within him. A balanced scale. A scarred face grinning in the firelight. Towering trees blurring past to the thunder of hooves. A yellow door on a drab, urban street. A small flower held in a delicate hand.
His thoughts stilled. He opened himself to his surroundings.
There.
Without words, as though one mind, he and Tuevel thunder down the bank and across the arroyo, the great stag lowering his head at the last moment as they slam into something unseen, the hunter flickering into view with a panicked look on his twisted features. Varis raises his blade.
And then, miraculously - silence.
The vultures circling above and the corpses in the trees fall silent. The knight turns, raising his lance to salute the sky, as hole appears in the fabric of reality, and through it, on black feathered wings, hairless scalp encircled with a crown of flame, comes the being they have sought.
Zariel the Fallen, Lady of the First, Archduchess of Avernus has arrived.
Ignoring the fanciful bazar in the distance, they had searched for one of the ‘trees’ more sheltered from general view - an amusing precaution, considering what was to transpire - and Baine set about freeing the martyred knight affixed to its vicious boughs. The stirges had been scared off and the towering Morning Knight had just begun to break off the branches holding the prisoner in place when a cry went up - first from the armoured corpse Baine was freeing, then from every other crucified creature on the Way, and from the mouth of every hellish vulture circling the condemned. An ululating wail that turned their marrow to ice.
The sound of hooves rang out against the blistering surface of the magma wadi, the Hellknight coming to stop before the tree Baine was perched in.
“Who are you? Why do you defy Zariel’s authority?”
He had wanted to respond, ought really to have made himself the knight’s focus, but the words had caught in his throat. He could not take his eyes from the black iron plates, the long, vicious lance. It took all his strength not to tear his own harness from his back. Instead it was Taffeta who stood, who faced Zariel’s lieutenant down. Taffeta, who wished only to protect her family and her friends. The sight of the diminutive woman staring down a fallen angel - for such he was, there could be no mistaking the twisted grace - would have been comical if it were not so terrifying.
I was a fool to ever think that woman a coward.
The battle was joined, just as they had known it must be - Sunday and Baine attacking the knight and his guards as Pieni continued to weave a spell from the cover of a large stone. As two of Zariel’s hunters joined the fray, Varis finally spurred himself to action, charging along the rise to meet the first of them.
“I know who you are. I’ve been looking for you for weeks.”
The Orthon’s words hissed from empty air where moments before it had stood.
“And now you have found me. You will wish you had not.”
Even as he spoke the words he felt empty. This place was draining him, leeching away the tenuous calm he had managed to find since his return to Daring. Shaking his head, he pushed down the rising panic, as Sunday and Baine traded devastating blows with the knight and Taffeta annihilated his entourage.
Again, both hunters vanished into thin air. Closing his eyes, he reached for the small island of calm within him. A balanced scale. A scarred face grinning in the firelight. Towering trees blurring past to the thunder of hooves. A yellow door on a drab, urban street. A small flower held in a delicate hand.
His thoughts stilled. He opened himself to his surroundings.
There.
Without words, as though one mind, he and Tuevel thunder down the bank and across the arroyo, the great stag lowering his head at the last moment as they slam into something unseen, the hunter flickering into view with a panicked look on his twisted features. Varis raises his blade.
And then, miraculously - silence.
The vultures circling above and the corpses in the trees fall silent. The knight turns, raising his lance to salute the sky, as hole appears in the fabric of reality, and through it, on black feathered wings, hairless scalp encircled with a crown of flame, comes the being they have sought.
Zariel the Fallen, Lady of the First, Archduchess of Avernus has arrived.
