Atlantic City 20/04 Sorrel Darkfire
Apr 22, 2022 21:52:11 GMT
Lykksie, Velania Kalugina, and 3 more like this
Post by stephena on Apr 22, 2022 21:52:11 GMT
“I have wiped out many nations, devastating their fortress walls and towers. Their cities are now deserted; their streets are in silent ruin. There are no survivors to even tell what happened.”
Zephaniah 3: 6-10
It was dusk in the north east sprawl and Sorrel was about to declare herself lost when a heavy hand clamped on her shoulder.
“Jackal,” she nodded, releasing her sword grip.
“Before we go – what did he say?” the rasping voice that spoke with the heaviness of aeons at war sounded too tired to be curious.
“I didn’t tell him who, um, ‘hired’ me,” she didn’t turn, just spoke into the dusk
“Why not?”
“It felt like I was going over his head,” she shrugged. “I mean, I was hired by his goddess.”
“Oh, he’s that kind is he?”
“Yeah, bit of an arsehole. But lovely. But a dick. But wise. But a bit annoying.”
Jackal turned and started walking. Sorrel followed, as she knew he knew she would. They rounded a corner and saw Tayz, Zola and Velania. She was very pleased to see them, but restrained her urge to hug them all, and turned her attention to a gnome wizard she didn’t recognise
“Sorrel Darkfire, at your service and your family’s,” she bowed her head, but was instantly distracted by Velania’s voice. She was telling Jackal something and trying not to be heard. Sorrel picked up the wizard’s name – Amble – then tuned in after the first crucial words had already been exchanged.
“I listened to your advice and tried to act on it,” she was saying.
Jackal nodded and turned to Amble. “You’ve been vetted but you’re new. You will probably die, and we can’t promise payment,” he said. Cheerful as ever.
“OK,” Amble said bravely. “I understand.”
Sorrel liked this wizard.
“We’re going,” Jackal turned and started walking.
“He does that,” Sorrel reassured Amble as they scurried after him.
This calls for a mind with wisdom
She hadn’t been this way in a while. The north east sprawl had seen some development, she noted. There was a new temple, a humble establishment dedicated to Ilmater, the crying god, who takes on suffering of the world and protects the vulnerable. Shame about the crying, Sorrel thought. Otherwise he’d be quite the dude.
Jackal strode past the temple to a small building that looked like a priest’s living quarters beside it. Jackal pounded on the door and it creaked open to reveal a face Sorrel had seen briefly when he was helping Silvia. Father Cai, if she remembered rightly. Although she thought he lived in Fort Ettin.
Jackal and Father Cai looked at each other in stony silence for some time.
Finally, Cai spoke. “The last time I saw you, you swore I would never see you again.”
“The last time I saw you, you swore you were getting out of the game,” Jackal replied. “But you didn’t.”
There was another long pause then Cai stood aside and let them in.
As Sorrel stepped through the door into the humble wooden shack she was slapped in the face by the simmering tension – was it sexual? No. Anger? No. But something with a bitter, bitter taste.
The room was sparsely decorated with one long table wand a few chairs. A young half elven woman with intricate facial tattoos and a shock of purple hair walked towards them, supporting herself with a cane, and introduced herself as Cassima as she guided them to low seats around the table.
“Right,” Cai said as he boiled an ancient kettle over a low fire. “Now, why the fuck are you here?”
“I told him to come because you’re not listening to me,” Cassima’s reply shocked everyone except Jackal.
“Should I be worried about the unending word?” he asked. “She gets visions,” he added, as if that explained everything.
“And I received one not meant for me,” Cassima nodded. She described a strange dream that Sorrel struggled to follow. “What are the blade and the ash?” Cassima asked when she was done.
Tayz pulled out his notebook and showed her the symbol of the Five, the fiends, the followers of Shar and the bringers of destruction.
“The symbol, fiends, a holy war, is that about the gist of it?” Cassima seemed unmoved.
“It is a cycle of violence between two goddesses,” Zola’s reply was hard to read, Sorrel thought. Was she angry? “It is not the apocalypse but innocents will die,” Zola finished.
Cai angrily stalked over set down a pot of tea. “What does this have to do with us? We do not follow either of these gods.”
Cassima interrupted him. “Are you looking for artefacts? I have a location.”
“They are important….” Tayz nodded carefully.
Cassima pulled out a map of the Feythorn forest and drew a neat x near the Cave of Selune and the Temple of Torm
“Maybe there’s a necklace there but I stopped listening after I realised it was Selûne as I thought it was a misdial,” she shrugged.
“Why did the goddess speak to you?” Sorrel asked.
Cassima shrugged again. “I have not the foggiest. My visions are usually more to do with interplanar rifts. I get a jagged feeling and the sound of something ripping. This didn’t have any of that. This felt buried in the ground with something hunting me.”
“They are hunting the artefacts, but they can’t get them until we do,” Zola sounded weary.
“You need to stop the innocents from dying,” Cassima said, simply.
She closed her eyes, opened them and they were white, no pupils to be seen. “There is something in the smoke,” her voice was hoarse. “Beware the smoke.”
“The flesh eater,” Zola hissed. “The one who ate the hermit.”
“What?” Cassima’s eyes were clear now.
Jackal swigged down the last of his tea and stood. “Khaos will go with you,” he said, his fists resting on the table. “Try to keep them alive Velania.”
“I’m not doing too good a job of that at the moment,” the young cleric replied sadly.
“All you can do is keep doing the job,” Jackal turned from the table.
“I’m starting to understand why you have the manner you have,” Velania’s voice followed him. “No offence.”
“None taken whatsofuckingever,” Jackal stalked into the night.
Earth's Abominations
They walked for hours, the branches leaping out of the darkness to grab them and hold them back. Hills loomed out of nowhere and they trudged up them only to find a sharp cliff not marked on any map that blocked their way. They grew tired as they stumbled over vines and stumps, picking themselves up again and again after tripping over shapes that seemed to have vanished when they looked again.
Finally the forest thinned and they stood at the edge of a long abandoned ruin, the moon gleaming vividly overhead. The once smooth road that had lead there many centuries ago was barely detectable beneath layers of dust, sand, shrubs and leaves. The occasional animal could be heard rustling in the tall grasses or hiding in the wild overgrown bushes.
Dry rot, vines and other undesired vegetation had taken the place of paint on the low stone walls and created their own kind of decoration. There were certain proportions and dimensions in the ruins, singular stones clearly shaped into symbols by artificial means and they invoked an awful feeling of hopelessness the Sorrel couldn't shake.
I looked, and Behold, a Black Horse! And its Rider had a Pair of Scales in his Hand...
“They’re here,” Khaos said. “They are waiting.”
They moved carefully forward and as they stepped onto the stone flags of the ruin, Sorrel’s hopelessness lifted. She could feel they were walking on hallowed ground. And then she saw the fog drifting against the wind, moving in patterns no misty vapour ever had. There were shapes in it, sneaking through the bushes.
Velania pushed forward, and Sorrel moved out to flank her, stumbling into a bush and choking on the poisonous fumes that erupted from it.
Suddenly the fiend Adhyël appeared on a wall, off in the distance, almost invisible in the darkness, his eyes trained on them in silence.
Sorrel moved up to stand beside Velania and loosed three arrows in rapid succession, all striking home.
Adhyël’s eyes bored into her as he plucked the arrows casually from his flesh and vanished.
The silence fell again. Great low square blocks stacked at impossible angles, all lit by an unholy purple light stretched off in all directions.
Zola, Amble and Tayz moved up quietly behind them.
They waited. All was still.
Velania moved carefully forward
Rahmiël winked into existence standing on a wall beside them.
Zola charged forward howling “come back for a bit of fun? Don’t run away this time. That’s boring.”
The fiend vanished.
“Are these illusions?” Zola turned to the others.
“It’s hard to tell,” Velania was turning this way and that. “Father Cai said beware of the smoke.”
Tayz murmured an arcane ritual and moved carefully amongst the rocks and stones searching for soft emanations of magic magic.
Suddenly Adhyël lurched into existence, closer this time.
Sorrel let two arrows fly. Both buried themselves in fiend flesh.
Zah’Ranin appeared at the top of a high ledge, their arms unfolding and unfolding with smooth, oily, whale-like surfaces as they stretched into fearsome, unnatural limbs with long slim curving claws at the end. And then the creature smiled. There was something so wrong, so perverted about that distended leer as it grew wider and wider, pushing the beast’s face out into unthinkable proportions.
A Mighty Angel
Velania’s eyes glowed and great wings unfurled from her back as she rose into the air to face Zah’Ranin. “I wish to see who we must send home,” her voice was cold, angry. She stared into the fiend’s eyes.
Zah’Ranin stared back.
Creation held its breath.
And then Khaos spoke in their minds. “They cannot attack you. This is Holy ground. But they are growing stronger. More are coming. Find the chest. Hurry. Their power is growing.”
As their voice faded away the fiend Ophanium appeared in the distance, winked out and reappeared, closer this time.
Shapes rustled in the distended perversions of vegetation that clambered across the ruins, the noises getting ever closer.
Sorrel and Tayz cast out their spells, hunting for power and energy as Velania circled Zah’Ranin in slow, sweeping circles.
The Unnamed Fiend boiled up from the earth and his eyes beheld Velania, awestruck. The noises grew louder.
“The Five are all here,” Zola gasped. “They are all arisen.”
Sorrel span, searching the night, and there was Adhyël. Two more arrows. Two more hits. Two more plucked from his flesh with insolent disregard.
Tayz sent up a cry – “I have found the source of power!”
He scrabbled at the ground, chanting a prayer and summoning a glowing celestial warrior who unsheathed his blade, caught sight of the fiends and raised his blade to attack.
“No,” Tayz was exasperated. “Help me dig.”
The angel blinked in disbelief.
“Hurry!”
The Five moved closer. Khaos spoke in their minds. “You must do this now. Now!”
Be Faithful unto Death
Zola sprinted over to Tayz and the angel and they hauled the chest from the earth. Khaos suddenly appeared although Sorrel felt she had seen them there the whole time.
“On my count, run,” they said.
There was a huge explosion at their feet, darkness and shadow energy ripping through dimensions like a blade through rotting flesh.
They ran, crashing through the underbrush, scratched and torn as branches ripped at them.
Sorrel felt something hunting her. She could hear it panting, feel the earth juddering beneath its thundering feet.
Suddenly a huge hand snaked out of the gloom and ripped open her chest just as the first rays of sun gleamed through the leaves of the Feythorn.
And the sounds of pursuit stopped.
Exhausted, they found each other, torn and battered but alive.
For now.
Zephaniah 3: 6-10
It was dusk in the north east sprawl and Sorrel was about to declare herself lost when a heavy hand clamped on her shoulder.
“Jackal,” she nodded, releasing her sword grip.
“Before we go – what did he say?” the rasping voice that spoke with the heaviness of aeons at war sounded too tired to be curious.
“I didn’t tell him who, um, ‘hired’ me,” she didn’t turn, just spoke into the dusk
“Why not?”
“It felt like I was going over his head,” she shrugged. “I mean, I was hired by his goddess.”
“Oh, he’s that kind is he?”
“Yeah, bit of an arsehole. But lovely. But a dick. But wise. But a bit annoying.”
Jackal turned and started walking. Sorrel followed, as she knew he knew she would. They rounded a corner and saw Tayz, Zola and Velania. She was very pleased to see them, but restrained her urge to hug them all, and turned her attention to a gnome wizard she didn’t recognise
“Sorrel Darkfire, at your service and your family’s,” she bowed her head, but was instantly distracted by Velania’s voice. She was telling Jackal something and trying not to be heard. Sorrel picked up the wizard’s name – Amble – then tuned in after the first crucial words had already been exchanged.
“I listened to your advice and tried to act on it,” she was saying.
Jackal nodded and turned to Amble. “You’ve been vetted but you’re new. You will probably die, and we can’t promise payment,” he said. Cheerful as ever.
“OK,” Amble said bravely. “I understand.”
Sorrel liked this wizard.
“We’re going,” Jackal turned and started walking.
“He does that,” Sorrel reassured Amble as they scurried after him.
This calls for a mind with wisdom
She hadn’t been this way in a while. The north east sprawl had seen some development, she noted. There was a new temple, a humble establishment dedicated to Ilmater, the crying god, who takes on suffering of the world and protects the vulnerable. Shame about the crying, Sorrel thought. Otherwise he’d be quite the dude.
Jackal strode past the temple to a small building that looked like a priest’s living quarters beside it. Jackal pounded on the door and it creaked open to reveal a face Sorrel had seen briefly when he was helping Silvia. Father Cai, if she remembered rightly. Although she thought he lived in Fort Ettin.
Jackal and Father Cai looked at each other in stony silence for some time.
Finally, Cai spoke. “The last time I saw you, you swore I would never see you again.”
“The last time I saw you, you swore you were getting out of the game,” Jackal replied. “But you didn’t.”
There was another long pause then Cai stood aside and let them in.
As Sorrel stepped through the door into the humble wooden shack she was slapped in the face by the simmering tension – was it sexual? No. Anger? No. But something with a bitter, bitter taste.
The room was sparsely decorated with one long table wand a few chairs. A young half elven woman with intricate facial tattoos and a shock of purple hair walked towards them, supporting herself with a cane, and introduced herself as Cassima as she guided them to low seats around the table.
“Right,” Cai said as he boiled an ancient kettle over a low fire. “Now, why the fuck are you here?”
“I told him to come because you’re not listening to me,” Cassima’s reply shocked everyone except Jackal.
“Should I be worried about the unending word?” he asked. “She gets visions,” he added, as if that explained everything.
“And I received one not meant for me,” Cassima nodded. She described a strange dream that Sorrel struggled to follow. “What are the blade and the ash?” Cassima asked when she was done.
Tayz pulled out his notebook and showed her the symbol of the Five, the fiends, the followers of Shar and the bringers of destruction.
“The symbol, fiends, a holy war, is that about the gist of it?” Cassima seemed unmoved.
“It is a cycle of violence between two goddesses,” Zola’s reply was hard to read, Sorrel thought. Was she angry? “It is not the apocalypse but innocents will die,” Zola finished.
Cai angrily stalked over set down a pot of tea. “What does this have to do with us? We do not follow either of these gods.”
Cassima interrupted him. “Are you looking for artefacts? I have a location.”
“They are important….” Tayz nodded carefully.
Cassima pulled out a map of the Feythorn forest and drew a neat x near the Cave of Selune and the Temple of Torm
“Maybe there’s a necklace there but I stopped listening after I realised it was Selûne as I thought it was a misdial,” she shrugged.
“Why did the goddess speak to you?” Sorrel asked.
Cassima shrugged again. “I have not the foggiest. My visions are usually more to do with interplanar rifts. I get a jagged feeling and the sound of something ripping. This didn’t have any of that. This felt buried in the ground with something hunting me.”
“They are hunting the artefacts, but they can’t get them until we do,” Zola sounded weary.
“You need to stop the innocents from dying,” Cassima said, simply.
She closed her eyes, opened them and they were white, no pupils to be seen. “There is something in the smoke,” her voice was hoarse. “Beware the smoke.”
“The flesh eater,” Zola hissed. “The one who ate the hermit.”
“What?” Cassima’s eyes were clear now.
Jackal swigged down the last of his tea and stood. “Khaos will go with you,” he said, his fists resting on the table. “Try to keep them alive Velania.”
“I’m not doing too good a job of that at the moment,” the young cleric replied sadly.
“All you can do is keep doing the job,” Jackal turned from the table.
“I’m starting to understand why you have the manner you have,” Velania’s voice followed him. “No offence.”
“None taken whatsofuckingever,” Jackal stalked into the night.
Earth's Abominations
They walked for hours, the branches leaping out of the darkness to grab them and hold them back. Hills loomed out of nowhere and they trudged up them only to find a sharp cliff not marked on any map that blocked their way. They grew tired as they stumbled over vines and stumps, picking themselves up again and again after tripping over shapes that seemed to have vanished when they looked again.
Finally the forest thinned and they stood at the edge of a long abandoned ruin, the moon gleaming vividly overhead. The once smooth road that had lead there many centuries ago was barely detectable beneath layers of dust, sand, shrubs and leaves. The occasional animal could be heard rustling in the tall grasses or hiding in the wild overgrown bushes.
Dry rot, vines and other undesired vegetation had taken the place of paint on the low stone walls and created their own kind of decoration. There were certain proportions and dimensions in the ruins, singular stones clearly shaped into symbols by artificial means and they invoked an awful feeling of hopelessness the Sorrel couldn't shake.
I looked, and Behold, a Black Horse! And its Rider had a Pair of Scales in his Hand...
“They’re here,” Khaos said. “They are waiting.”
They moved carefully forward and as they stepped onto the stone flags of the ruin, Sorrel’s hopelessness lifted. She could feel they were walking on hallowed ground. And then she saw the fog drifting against the wind, moving in patterns no misty vapour ever had. There were shapes in it, sneaking through the bushes.
Velania pushed forward, and Sorrel moved out to flank her, stumbling into a bush and choking on the poisonous fumes that erupted from it.
Suddenly the fiend Adhyël appeared on a wall, off in the distance, almost invisible in the darkness, his eyes trained on them in silence.
Sorrel moved up to stand beside Velania and loosed three arrows in rapid succession, all striking home.
Adhyël’s eyes bored into her as he plucked the arrows casually from his flesh and vanished.
The silence fell again. Great low square blocks stacked at impossible angles, all lit by an unholy purple light stretched off in all directions.
Zola, Amble and Tayz moved up quietly behind them.
They waited. All was still.
Velania moved carefully forward
Rahmiël winked into existence standing on a wall beside them.
Zola charged forward howling “come back for a bit of fun? Don’t run away this time. That’s boring.”
The fiend vanished.
“Are these illusions?” Zola turned to the others.
“It’s hard to tell,” Velania was turning this way and that. “Father Cai said beware of the smoke.”
Tayz murmured an arcane ritual and moved carefully amongst the rocks and stones searching for soft emanations of magic magic.
Suddenly Adhyël lurched into existence, closer this time.
Sorrel let two arrows fly. Both buried themselves in fiend flesh.
Zah’Ranin appeared at the top of a high ledge, their arms unfolding and unfolding with smooth, oily, whale-like surfaces as they stretched into fearsome, unnatural limbs with long slim curving claws at the end. And then the creature smiled. There was something so wrong, so perverted about that distended leer as it grew wider and wider, pushing the beast’s face out into unthinkable proportions.
A Mighty Angel
Velania’s eyes glowed and great wings unfurled from her back as she rose into the air to face Zah’Ranin. “I wish to see who we must send home,” her voice was cold, angry. She stared into the fiend’s eyes.
Zah’Ranin stared back.
Creation held its breath.
And then Khaos spoke in their minds. “They cannot attack you. This is Holy ground. But they are growing stronger. More are coming. Find the chest. Hurry. Their power is growing.”
As their voice faded away the fiend Ophanium appeared in the distance, winked out and reappeared, closer this time.
Shapes rustled in the distended perversions of vegetation that clambered across the ruins, the noises getting ever closer.
Sorrel and Tayz cast out their spells, hunting for power and energy as Velania circled Zah’Ranin in slow, sweeping circles.
The Unnamed Fiend boiled up from the earth and his eyes beheld Velania, awestruck. The noises grew louder.
“The Five are all here,” Zola gasped. “They are all arisen.”
Sorrel span, searching the night, and there was Adhyël. Two more arrows. Two more hits. Two more plucked from his flesh with insolent disregard.
Tayz sent up a cry – “I have found the source of power!”
He scrabbled at the ground, chanting a prayer and summoning a glowing celestial warrior who unsheathed his blade, caught sight of the fiends and raised his blade to attack.
“No,” Tayz was exasperated. “Help me dig.”
The angel blinked in disbelief.
“Hurry!”
The Five moved closer. Khaos spoke in their minds. “You must do this now. Now!”
Be Faithful unto Death
Zola sprinted over to Tayz and the angel and they hauled the chest from the earth. Khaos suddenly appeared although Sorrel felt she had seen them there the whole time.
“On my count, run,” they said.
There was a huge explosion at their feet, darkness and shadow energy ripping through dimensions like a blade through rotting flesh.
They ran, crashing through the underbrush, scratched and torn as branches ripped at them.
Sorrel felt something hunting her. She could hear it panting, feel the earth juddering beneath its thundering feet.
Suddenly a huge hand snaked out of the gloom and ripped open her chest just as the first rays of sun gleamed through the leaves of the Feythorn.
And the sounds of pursuit stopped.
Exhausted, they found each other, torn and battered but alive.
For now.
