Post by Elarris on Jul 6, 2024 20:31:07 GMT
“I mean, thank you for asking my advice, but I wear metal and hit things with metal, and I don’t understand most of what’s going on with these planes and dragons and primordials so honestly, I think… whatever you suggest,” Elarris gave Orianna a wan smile.
She nodded patiently. “Yes Elarris, but the question was slightly simpler – would you like to go and get Mendal or shall I call him like the others?”
Elarris realised he’d been staring past Orianna at the piles of baked goods on the table behind her and hadn’t properly heard her question. He snapped back into the room, then feigned thoughtfulness and a decision. “I think… you call him with magic.”
He didn’t want to admit he had no idea where Mendal lived. His social skills had deteriorated alarmingly after years on the road. The charming young noble who could entertain any social gathering was long gone, replaced by a grizzled 40 something mercenary who had to leave notes to himself to maintain his personal hygiene.
When the party – mainly selected by Orianna – finally arrived he was relieved to find a character called Digs seemed just as unsettled and edgy. Perhaps even more unsettled and edgy if truth be known. Extremely wary of a suntan certainly. Frigus had hailed Elarris as ‘cousin’ which puzzled him.
“I’m not sure we’re related, are we?” Elarris began before Orianna cut the conversation off with a significant glance at Frigus.
They set off.
--
Elarris didn’t want to admit how nervous he was. The horror of the dragon Stellarum summoning tendrils of bestial darkness from his Sword still haunted him, and whilst he hoped this… what was her name? Archwyrm Eroshira, the Sunstone Dragon? He hoped she might help, he felt that the curse that rested within him was old and strong. If it had defeated Stellarum, what hope could anyone have?
Elarris recalled asking Stellarum how he could find this potential saviour.
“She is currently among the stars, I’m afraid,” Stellarum had said. “A place that will prove incredibly difficult and time consuming for you to get to. Fortunately, I know of somewhere that can summon her to you. Travel to the Plane of Bytopia and the ruins of Eroshira’s temple.”
Stellarum had reached into her plum-coloured dress and pulled out a small round piece of sunstone, golden in colour and shining in the midday sunlight. “There will be a pedestal. Place this on there and call for her. She will come.”
--
Bytopia… well, it was a headfuck.
It was as if someone had taken reality and tried to make a sandwich out of it, folding over the magnificence of creation as if it was half a slice of bread.
Elarris found this disconcerting, not least because if the sandwich had a filling he couldn’t ignore the fact that it included him and he struggled with a sneaking dread that he was part of a celestial picnic for creatures from beyond the stars until he concluded that shapeless and unnameable abominations probably wouldn’t food up neatly before devouring it.
Fortunately, the others were paying more attention to the route and they came on the ruins of an ancient temple with a glittering sunstone statue on a high pedestal.
Elarris admired it for a while, then became aware that everyone else was looking at him.
“Oh, yes….”
He swallowed and then felt magic swirl around him as Mendal and Moradin flooded power into him.
Feeling slightly but not entirely better, he walked up to the pedestal and found a perfectly shaped niche which the piece of sunstone he’d carried so carefully slipped neatly into.
He stepped back, fell to one knee and waited.
Nothing happened.
“Sorry, yes, of course,” he stood up, opened his arms wide and called out; “Eroshira, the Sunstone Dragon, the light of the dawn made manifest, hear my plea for only you can help me!”
Suddenly a vast radiant shimmering light almost blinded him as it poured from the heavens to expand into a gold dragon who’s size defied sanity. Her wingspan was the length of a small market town, and her jaws were wide enough to swallow a fortress.
Elarris fell forward, grovelling in the dust of the temple floor, as a voice echoed like the crack of creation at time’s first dawn: “Bear with me…”
If anyone claimed Eroshira’s human form was not the most beautiful woman Elarris had ever seen then she would at least have been entitled to a judge’s ruling.
After Elarris had managed to find his voice and run through his story – louche aristo, hired by two dragons in human form, castle, hoard, weird king, magical sword, dolorous wound, bleak armageddon, kiss from the young dragon woman, years of pain and torment despised by all, Eroshira nodded thoughtfully for a moment.
“It sounds like you met my twins,” she concluded. “Show me the wound and let me see this sword?”
Her twins? Elarris was still struggling with the idea of the stunning dragon whose kiss had bestowed magical protection on him but, if anything, seemed a little older than Eroshira… he decided to just go with it.
He stripped off his chain mail and undershirt, beads of sweat forming on the ridges of his battle hardened muscles and rolling down the ridges of his abs and coming to rest on his inguinal crease.
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Then he knelt and laid his sword on the ground at her feet.
“That’s mine!” she cried. “I suspected as much. But it sounds like it was in the semi-dragolich Malfenian’s hoard for so long, that his essence imbued itself into the sword, cursing the blade and those who wield it. The sword hungers for violence, and you are powerless to resist when the fury takes you. This is not ideal, my Herald.”
Elarris gasped, looked to his companions to see if he had really heard correctly. Orianna was beaming with a certain ‘I knew it!’ satisfaction.
He was filled with questions and emotions but his mouth seemed fixed in a wide, dumbfounded gape so he barely heard Eroshira carrying on in a matter of fact way.
“I think the only place we can find help is the Heart of Light on the elemental plane of radiance. Not really the best place for mortals to go to, I’ll be honest. Without significant protections you’d be dead in a heart beat. It is very close to the positive plane. Ready to go?”
Elarris tried to sort through the flood of information, almost too overwhelmed to act. He noticed Mendal sighing with some impatience, and realised what a fool he must look, so leapt to his feet and nodded, still not trusting his voice.
“Come, my herald," Eroshira's voice rang out. "And please put your shirt on.”
Eroshira began to glow, like the ember of a fire breathed on to ignite a fresh flame and the light flowed out of her, gathering them up in its power then hurling them through an eternity in just the fraction of a second.
--
As they came to rest, the light grew even brighter around them. It was as if every rainbow had fused together and split apart at the same time, with the entire spectrum so beautiful and painful to look at.
“Happy Pride month,” Frigus pointed at the cascading colours, and Elarris felt an immense pride swell within him at his good fortune to fall in with these wonderful, crazy, unfathomable Kantas kids and their refusal to be defeated.
Eroshira led them to a shaft of purest blue that resolved into a stone outcrop where an unearthly figure hovered, shimmering, a being of pure incandescence.
“This is Adai – the First Star,” Eroshira introduced them. “She is a Primordial Incarnate who has taken our side. Follow her.”
Around Adai, Elarris suddenly realised, was a tower of glass, twisting and turning in impossible dimensions. Behind the First Star a pillar rose with a stair around it that seemed to reach towards heaven.
As they climbed he was surprised to find they reached the top in a few minutes, as if dimensions or time were somehow malleable.
They stood in a wide, high chamber – maybe 400ft across, with a ball of light pulsing at its centre.
He knew immediately what was expected of him, but held back for a few seconds, hoping against hope that there might be another way. As he waited, Mendal, Frigus and Orianna reached out towards him and he felt strength and protection flowing into his veins.
Digs was looking sympathetic. “You don’t have to do everything they say, you know,” he said kindly.
Elarris shrugged. “I’ve come this far. I don’t know that I have any hope of another choice.”
And at a nod from Eroshira and Adai he stepped into the light.
At first it was like stepping into a pool of water as if every atom in the liquid was blazing fire, as if the water were flames and the flames were blood. As the light reached his wound he felt something squirm inside him, as if worms or black tentacles were writing against the light.
And then the Sword touched the light. He arched his back in pain as black fire raced through his bones, eating away at his soul. He opened his eyes and saw his friends watching him. He felt comfort and company and he gripped the pommel of the sword tighter, wielding it as it struggled to be free. A screeching growling roar echoed within and without and he fumbled, dropping the sword into the pool of light.
The pitch black shape of the sword appeared on the surface of the light. Tendrils of darkness flowed outwards through the pool, polluting the radiance with its evil.
For a moment, he was afraid. The darkness was winning. He reached out for the hilt of the sword and tendrils lashed out to slap onto his face and crawl across his skin. The tentacles began to burrow into his flesh and he opened his mouth to scream when he met Orianna’s eyes and saw her reaching towards him.
With all his might he forced the darkness back into the sword, the tentacles peeling aways his skin and then tearing his muscles from the bone.
The pain was so intense he nearly passed out, then Mendal called out and some power manifested around him, cauterising his wounds and alleviating his pain.
The darkness pulled itself back into the sword, forming into the nightmare vision of a dragon, a pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with 17 eyes blinking in deathly glowing greens and yellows in random positions as countless mouths gnawed the air with a million savage teeth, ugly prehensile paws, and barbed tails that lashed needlessly around. It was like an eldritch creature from the whispering darkness trying to force the foetid flesh of dead gods into the approximation of blasphemous dragon.
The creature opened its maws and ripped across his shoulder, tearing bone from bone and flesh from flesh.
He bit down on the leather sheath Mendal had given him and with all his will pushed the darkness from him, watching it congeal and slide back into the sword.
The blade was not free from the curse, but it was somehow more a part of him than he was a part of it. He had control.
He lifted the sword and it was changed. The blade was almost black, with runes of draconic along the blade. It felt newly forged, as did he and he walked from the light, only to stagger, at the limits of exhaustion, into the arms of Eroshira.
--
The next few hours passed in a dream.
He knew they travelled back to Oriannas, that he was fed and that he lay with his head in Eroshira’s lap as the other’s talked earnestly.
The last words he heard before sleep stole him away were about Eroshira’s need for… something… something vital that lies in the hands of a creature called Malignus.
He thought of the pain that he borne him here – the twins, the king, the curse, the eternal wound, the half victory in the radiant pool – and for a moment he hoped this sleep might carry him away to the endless dream that greets us all in the end.
But he also knew that he could never refuse Eroshira. His doom was upon him now. This life may not have been the party he was hoping for, he thought as his eyes closed, but now that he was here, he might as well dance.
She nodded patiently. “Yes Elarris, but the question was slightly simpler – would you like to go and get Mendal or shall I call him like the others?”
Elarris realised he’d been staring past Orianna at the piles of baked goods on the table behind her and hadn’t properly heard her question. He snapped back into the room, then feigned thoughtfulness and a decision. “I think… you call him with magic.”
He didn’t want to admit he had no idea where Mendal lived. His social skills had deteriorated alarmingly after years on the road. The charming young noble who could entertain any social gathering was long gone, replaced by a grizzled 40 something mercenary who had to leave notes to himself to maintain his personal hygiene.
When the party – mainly selected by Orianna – finally arrived he was relieved to find a character called Digs seemed just as unsettled and edgy. Perhaps even more unsettled and edgy if truth be known. Extremely wary of a suntan certainly. Frigus had hailed Elarris as ‘cousin’ which puzzled him.
“I’m not sure we’re related, are we?” Elarris began before Orianna cut the conversation off with a significant glance at Frigus.
They set off.
--
Elarris didn’t want to admit how nervous he was. The horror of the dragon Stellarum summoning tendrils of bestial darkness from his Sword still haunted him, and whilst he hoped this… what was her name? Archwyrm Eroshira, the Sunstone Dragon? He hoped she might help, he felt that the curse that rested within him was old and strong. If it had defeated Stellarum, what hope could anyone have?
Elarris recalled asking Stellarum how he could find this potential saviour.
“She is currently among the stars, I’m afraid,” Stellarum had said. “A place that will prove incredibly difficult and time consuming for you to get to. Fortunately, I know of somewhere that can summon her to you. Travel to the Plane of Bytopia and the ruins of Eroshira’s temple.”
Stellarum had reached into her plum-coloured dress and pulled out a small round piece of sunstone, golden in colour and shining in the midday sunlight. “There will be a pedestal. Place this on there and call for her. She will come.”
--
Bytopia… well, it was a headfuck.
It was as if someone had taken reality and tried to make a sandwich out of it, folding over the magnificence of creation as if it was half a slice of bread.
Elarris found this disconcerting, not least because if the sandwich had a filling he couldn’t ignore the fact that it included him and he struggled with a sneaking dread that he was part of a celestial picnic for creatures from beyond the stars until he concluded that shapeless and unnameable abominations probably wouldn’t food up neatly before devouring it.
Fortunately, the others were paying more attention to the route and they came on the ruins of an ancient temple with a glittering sunstone statue on a high pedestal.
Elarris admired it for a while, then became aware that everyone else was looking at him.
“Oh, yes….”
He swallowed and then felt magic swirl around him as Mendal and Moradin flooded power into him.
Feeling slightly but not entirely better, he walked up to the pedestal and found a perfectly shaped niche which the piece of sunstone he’d carried so carefully slipped neatly into.
He stepped back, fell to one knee and waited.
Nothing happened.
“Sorry, yes, of course,” he stood up, opened his arms wide and called out; “Eroshira, the Sunstone Dragon, the light of the dawn made manifest, hear my plea for only you can help me!”
Suddenly a vast radiant shimmering light almost blinded him as it poured from the heavens to expand into a gold dragon who’s size defied sanity. Her wingspan was the length of a small market town, and her jaws were wide enough to swallow a fortress.
Elarris fell forward, grovelling in the dust of the temple floor, as a voice echoed like the crack of creation at time’s first dawn: “Bear with me…”
If anyone claimed Eroshira’s human form was not the most beautiful woman Elarris had ever seen then she would at least have been entitled to a judge’s ruling.
After Elarris had managed to find his voice and run through his story – louche aristo, hired by two dragons in human form, castle, hoard, weird king, magical sword, dolorous wound, bleak armageddon, kiss from the young dragon woman, years of pain and torment despised by all, Eroshira nodded thoughtfully for a moment.
“It sounds like you met my twins,” she concluded. “Show me the wound and let me see this sword?”
Her twins? Elarris was still struggling with the idea of the stunning dragon whose kiss had bestowed magical protection on him but, if anything, seemed a little older than Eroshira… he decided to just go with it.
He stripped off his chain mail and undershirt, beads of sweat forming on the ridges of his battle hardened muscles and rolling down the ridges of his abs and coming to rest on his inguinal crease.
Then he knelt and laid his sword on the ground at her feet.
“That’s mine!” she cried. “I suspected as much. But it sounds like it was in the semi-dragolich Malfenian’s hoard for so long, that his essence imbued itself into the sword, cursing the blade and those who wield it. The sword hungers for violence, and you are powerless to resist when the fury takes you. This is not ideal, my Herald.”
Elarris gasped, looked to his companions to see if he had really heard correctly. Orianna was beaming with a certain ‘I knew it!’ satisfaction.
He was filled with questions and emotions but his mouth seemed fixed in a wide, dumbfounded gape so he barely heard Eroshira carrying on in a matter of fact way.
“I think the only place we can find help is the Heart of Light on the elemental plane of radiance. Not really the best place for mortals to go to, I’ll be honest. Without significant protections you’d be dead in a heart beat. It is very close to the positive plane. Ready to go?”
Elarris tried to sort through the flood of information, almost too overwhelmed to act. He noticed Mendal sighing with some impatience, and realised what a fool he must look, so leapt to his feet and nodded, still not trusting his voice.
“Come, my herald," Eroshira's voice rang out. "And please put your shirt on.”
Eroshira began to glow, like the ember of a fire breathed on to ignite a fresh flame and the light flowed out of her, gathering them up in its power then hurling them through an eternity in just the fraction of a second.
--
As they came to rest, the light grew even brighter around them. It was as if every rainbow had fused together and split apart at the same time, with the entire spectrum so beautiful and painful to look at.
“Happy Pride month,” Frigus pointed at the cascading colours, and Elarris felt an immense pride swell within him at his good fortune to fall in with these wonderful, crazy, unfathomable Kantas kids and their refusal to be defeated.
Eroshira led them to a shaft of purest blue that resolved into a stone outcrop where an unearthly figure hovered, shimmering, a being of pure incandescence.
“This is Adai – the First Star,” Eroshira introduced them. “She is a Primordial Incarnate who has taken our side. Follow her.”
Around Adai, Elarris suddenly realised, was a tower of glass, twisting and turning in impossible dimensions. Behind the First Star a pillar rose with a stair around it that seemed to reach towards heaven.
As they climbed he was surprised to find they reached the top in a few minutes, as if dimensions or time were somehow malleable.
They stood in a wide, high chamber – maybe 400ft across, with a ball of light pulsing at its centre.
He knew immediately what was expected of him, but held back for a few seconds, hoping against hope that there might be another way. As he waited, Mendal, Frigus and Orianna reached out towards him and he felt strength and protection flowing into his veins.
Digs was looking sympathetic. “You don’t have to do everything they say, you know,” he said kindly.
Elarris shrugged. “I’ve come this far. I don’t know that I have any hope of another choice.”
And at a nod from Eroshira and Adai he stepped into the light.
At first it was like stepping into a pool of water as if every atom in the liquid was blazing fire, as if the water were flames and the flames were blood. As the light reached his wound he felt something squirm inside him, as if worms or black tentacles were writing against the light.
And then the Sword touched the light. He arched his back in pain as black fire raced through his bones, eating away at his soul. He opened his eyes and saw his friends watching him. He felt comfort and company and he gripped the pommel of the sword tighter, wielding it as it struggled to be free. A screeching growling roar echoed within and without and he fumbled, dropping the sword into the pool of light.
The pitch black shape of the sword appeared on the surface of the light. Tendrils of darkness flowed outwards through the pool, polluting the radiance with its evil.
For a moment, he was afraid. The darkness was winning. He reached out for the hilt of the sword and tendrils lashed out to slap onto his face and crawl across his skin. The tentacles began to burrow into his flesh and he opened his mouth to scream when he met Orianna’s eyes and saw her reaching towards him.
With all his might he forced the darkness back into the sword, the tentacles peeling aways his skin and then tearing his muscles from the bone.
The pain was so intense he nearly passed out, then Mendal called out and some power manifested around him, cauterising his wounds and alleviating his pain.
The darkness pulled itself back into the sword, forming into the nightmare vision of a dragon, a pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with 17 eyes blinking in deathly glowing greens and yellows in random positions as countless mouths gnawed the air with a million savage teeth, ugly prehensile paws, and barbed tails that lashed needlessly around. It was like an eldritch creature from the whispering darkness trying to force the foetid flesh of dead gods into the approximation of blasphemous dragon.
The creature opened its maws and ripped across his shoulder, tearing bone from bone and flesh from flesh.
He bit down on the leather sheath Mendal had given him and with all his will pushed the darkness from him, watching it congeal and slide back into the sword.
The blade was not free from the curse, but it was somehow more a part of him than he was a part of it. He had control.
He lifted the sword and it was changed. The blade was almost black, with runes of draconic along the blade. It felt newly forged, as did he and he walked from the light, only to stagger, at the limits of exhaustion, into the arms of Eroshira.
--
The next few hours passed in a dream.
He knew they travelled back to Oriannas, that he was fed and that he lay with his head in Eroshira’s lap as the other’s talked earnestly.
The last words he heard before sleep stole him away were about Eroshira’s need for… something… something vital that lies in the hands of a creature called Malignus.
He thought of the pain that he borne him here – the twins, the king, the curse, the eternal wound, the half victory in the radiant pool – and for a moment he hoped this sleep might carry him away to the endless dream that greets us all in the end.
But he also knew that he could never refuse Eroshira. His doom was upon him now. This life may not have been the party he was hoping for, he thought as his eyes closed, but now that he was here, he might as well dance.