To catch a fiend; to lose a friend
Sept 11, 2019 13:01:18 GMT
Grimes, Nuno (Rholor), and 6 more like this
Post by Sunday on Sept 11, 2019 13:01:18 GMT
Gripping Baine’s left hand in her right and Varis’ right hand in her left, Sunday is forcefully wrenched sideways as Daisy’s magic yanked them all clear of Orcus’ kingdom and threw them to the dirty ground in Daring’s main square.
Shifting planes that fast, that abruptly, always brings with it the momentary pain of dislocation and relocation. But Sunday doesn’t - can’t - feel that peculiar, unique ache this time.
Gripped by an emotion she doesn’t recognise, she is wracked with a far-worse agony.
In her mind’s eye, Sunday can still see - can still feel - eLk smashing headfirst into the countless and on-rushing ranks of Undead soldiers, breaking through to charge bravely, futilely, into the path of ten monstrous Bone Dragons beyond. His mossy, green-brown flanks already torn to bloody shreds by hundreds of grasping, clawing bone-fingers, he staggers for a moment. But somehow he finds the inner strength - the force of will - to rear up in primal defiance even as torrents of black energy melt his flesh and turn his marrow to wax. As the necrotic onslaught strips away his very essence, he continues to shatter bone and crack skulls with his flashing hooves, telepathically screaming at Sunday to GET OUT OF HERE!
Caught in the excruciating psychic backlash of their shared mental link, elK’s sacrifice to buy them time to flee takes its toll on her body. Sunday releases her grip on Baine’s and Varis’ hands, staggers a few feet away, and falls to her knees - retching as her companion’s diminishing death throes wash over her in waves of sympathetic pain.
Down on all fours, unable to stand, Sunday looks at her trembling hands and the long wooden claws slowly retracting beneath her skin. Her senses are heightened: she feels the need to either run until her feet bleed and she can run no more; or to fight and kill until nothing else is left alive in this world but her and her panic. Sweat covers her body in a thin, damp sheen and she can almost taste the blood pounding unceasingly in her ears.
Is this what it feels like? She wonders. Is this what Taffeta has been feeling all this time? Is this what my family felt in those last few minutes? Is this...fear..?
Sunday closes her eyes in an attempt to gather herself, but is forced to tear them open again as a series of terrifying afterimages burns across her inner vision: Baine collapsing in a stream of putrid bile spewing from the maw of the Death Knight General’s mount; Daisy’s eagle form wavering and dissipating in mid-air under a relentless arcane barrage; Varis’ red-and-black wings falling limp as the Knight’s sword plunges through his armoured chest once, twice, thrice…
She doesn’t know what to do with this feeling of helplessness - she seeks solace in the familiar, and the fear morphs into a pure white-hot anger that wells up in her. She wheels around to tear into the fools who didn’t listen to her, who thought the trip to the Abyss would be nothing...
But, as she surveys the others, her ire vanishes as quickly as it arrived: Ghesh and Baine, even as Daisy patches up their wounds, triumphantly examine the gigantic weapon they had retrieved, a - Sunday shudders - spiked and blood-encrusted maul Why is it always a fucking maul?!; Traavor, the quiet, mysterious half-elf, slumped with his back against the statue in the middle of the square, draining the last of his hip flask; and Varis, head bowed, chest heaving, closing up the last of his horrific injuries with his own righteous magic.
Do they feel this same fear? Sunday asks herself, looking at them all. Is this how people feel when I fail them?
Because she had failed them. All of them.
Her tactical indecision as battle started had cost them. Trying to walk a less-violent path had resulted in more of a bloodprice to be paid by her friends. Only Rholor’s powerful blessings from earlier in the day had warded most of them from death’s door.
She’d failed Baine, flying him straight into the path of peril she’d known he wasn’t ready to face, especially after what he’d shared last night; seeing him broiled alive, revived by Selûne, and then banished from the battlefield by their foe. At least that kept him safe from further harm she thinks bitterly.
She’d failed Ghesh and Traavor, abandoning them to explore the foul mountain and actually complete the near-suicidal task they had been set; leaving them alone to face being swarmed under by a host of Undead.
She’d failed Taffeta by doing what she’d promised her they wouldn’t do.
I tried to persuade them not to go to the Abyss on a fucking whim She tries to reassure herself That getting involved in the endless feud between the Hells and the Abyss by making a deal with Gorkur, a turncoat general of Asmodeus, to steal a weapon back from Lord Dur, one of the most-trusted vassals of Orcus, was the stupidest fucking idea I’d ever fucking heard.
There had been other options to find the information they needed, but Sunday had been unable to sway the group to what seemed a safer path. She tried to blame Varis and Daisy for that. How could they not know how dangerous jumping into the Abyss would be?! How could they bring the others along But she knows these are hollow words, that the anger and fear is directed at herself.
She knows now what she didn’t know a couple of hours ago.
Earlier, she’d thought that she had been worried about going into the Abyss because of the others, and - by some measure of truth - she had been; but a slow creeping realisation is taking hold: that she had mainly been afraid for herself, afraid that she would die down there. She could feel it still. The total absence of life and light in that place had sickened Sunday to her battered soul. She could still feel its vestigial cold clinging to her bones; the silent roar of anti-life permeating the very fibres of her being.
The fear wells up in her once more. She starts shaking again, bringing her hand up to her mouth as her body threatens to betray her. Fighting the urge to scream in unalloyed horror, she finally pushes herself back up to stand trembling in the gathering gloom of evening. Sunday looks at the weapon people had nearly died to retrieve. And for what? They still didn’t have the information they needed. Just a vague promise from Gorkur that he’d tell them what they needed to know once they returned his prize possession.
Shifting her weight, the hilt of the Infernal Greatsword slung across her back knocks into her temple - reminding her of the deal she’d made with Lothar, the knowledge merchant, an hour or two ago. Reminding her that they still hadn’t finished the job; that they needed to return to Sigil to conclude their bargains.
All this and more flashes through her mind in an instant or two, a flood of conflicting thoughts cold-shocking her limbs into paralysis. But the others are gathering themselves: standing up; looking about; talking about what to do next. Why can’t I move?! Sunday tries to rejoin them; she needs to rejoin them. She realises this is a turning point for her. Through sheer force of will, she takes a step forward, and another - fighting every nerve ending and instinct of her body screaming at her to run and hide and never come back. She crosses the intervening yards as though they were the widest chasm imaginable. Opening her mouth to speak, she strives to keep her tone level - almost icy - trying to project a semblance of her former self, even though she knows it is now lost forever, torn aside like a flimsy curtain in the face of her self-awareness and new-found fear.
“Let’s go back and get what we came for.”
Later that evening, Sunday arrives home at Willow Glade.
From her back, she unstraps the hellish weapon she’ll never use and leans it against a rocky outcropping at the base of the gigantic, gently swaying tree. Moving busily, almost urgently, she tidies away the plates and mugs from her earlier meals, and washes her soiled clothes in the stream, humming loudly - too loudly for it to be anything other than an attempt at self-distraction. Leaving her clothes to dry overnight, Sunday looks about the glade, looking for something to do; something that will help her ignore the nagging, questioning voice in the back of her mind.
...Sunday? Are you there..?
She’d been hearing it ever since they’d fled the Abyss; all through their return trip to Sigil; through the debriefing in Varis' office - a meeting she’d barely been able to pay attention to. At first, the voice had been faint, ragged - but it had grown in volume and confusion. Now, it just sounded lost and hurt.
Are you angry with me?
How could she be angry with him? Didn’t he know how afraid she was to face him; to see the marks on his body where the multitude of horrors had scratched and bite and dug; to see gouges and holes ripped in his wings; to see the aftershock of pain and abandonment deep in his hazel-brown eyes.
Please, Sunday, let me come back to you...
She tries to remember what Will told her - that he wouldn’t come if he didn’t want to. But why would he want to? She’d failed him as she’d failed the others, hadn’t she?
SUNDAY!
The force of the silent, desperate shout breaks through her immobilising panic and she drops to her knees for a second time that day. A section of the arcane blockade she had erected tumbles away and eLk steps through the rift from the Feywild into the centre of the glade. Sunday’s eyes are fixated on the ground; she can’t bring herself to raise her head - let alone stand to face her companion.
Two hooves enter the top of her vision, and a warm gust of breath rolls over her as eLk’s muzzle brushes against her cheek. This close to him, she can smell summer; she can feel sunlight; she can sense...hope…
Wrapping her arms around his strong neck, Sunday drags herself to her feet, finally looking at her friend.
Are you hurt?
The rest of the barrier falls away and - tears rolling down her face for the first time in her short, brutal life - she buries her face in his neck, beating her tiny fists against his flanks in impotent anger; in helpless relief. eLk stands motionless, absorbing her pain and fear into the depth of his ancient quiet.
Shifting planes that fast, that abruptly, always brings with it the momentary pain of dislocation and relocation. But Sunday doesn’t - can’t - feel that peculiar, unique ache this time.
Gripped by an emotion she doesn’t recognise, she is wracked with a far-worse agony.
In her mind’s eye, Sunday can still see - can still feel - eLk smashing headfirst into the countless and on-rushing ranks of Undead soldiers, breaking through to charge bravely, futilely, into the path of ten monstrous Bone Dragons beyond. His mossy, green-brown flanks already torn to bloody shreds by hundreds of grasping, clawing bone-fingers, he staggers for a moment. But somehow he finds the inner strength - the force of will - to rear up in primal defiance even as torrents of black energy melt his flesh and turn his marrow to wax. As the necrotic onslaught strips away his very essence, he continues to shatter bone and crack skulls with his flashing hooves, telepathically screaming at Sunday to GET OUT OF HERE!
Caught in the excruciating psychic backlash of their shared mental link, elK’s sacrifice to buy them time to flee takes its toll on her body. Sunday releases her grip on Baine’s and Varis’ hands, staggers a few feet away, and falls to her knees - retching as her companion’s diminishing death throes wash over her in waves of sympathetic pain.
Down on all fours, unable to stand, Sunday looks at her trembling hands and the long wooden claws slowly retracting beneath her skin. Her senses are heightened: she feels the need to either run until her feet bleed and she can run no more; or to fight and kill until nothing else is left alive in this world but her and her panic. Sweat covers her body in a thin, damp sheen and she can almost taste the blood pounding unceasingly in her ears.
Is this what it feels like? She wonders. Is this what Taffeta has been feeling all this time? Is this what my family felt in those last few minutes? Is this...fear..?
Sunday closes her eyes in an attempt to gather herself, but is forced to tear them open again as a series of terrifying afterimages burns across her inner vision: Baine collapsing in a stream of putrid bile spewing from the maw of the Death Knight General’s mount; Daisy’s eagle form wavering and dissipating in mid-air under a relentless arcane barrage; Varis’ red-and-black wings falling limp as the Knight’s sword plunges through his armoured chest once, twice, thrice…
She doesn’t know what to do with this feeling of helplessness - she seeks solace in the familiar, and the fear morphs into a pure white-hot anger that wells up in her. She wheels around to tear into the fools who didn’t listen to her, who thought the trip to the Abyss would be nothing...
But, as she surveys the others, her ire vanishes as quickly as it arrived: Ghesh and Baine, even as Daisy patches up their wounds, triumphantly examine the gigantic weapon they had retrieved, a - Sunday shudders - spiked and blood-encrusted maul Why is it always a fucking maul?!; Traavor, the quiet, mysterious half-elf, slumped with his back against the statue in the middle of the square, draining the last of his hip flask; and Varis, head bowed, chest heaving, closing up the last of his horrific injuries with his own righteous magic.
Do they feel this same fear? Sunday asks herself, looking at them all. Is this how people feel when I fail them?
Because she had failed them. All of them.
Her tactical indecision as battle started had cost them. Trying to walk a less-violent path had resulted in more of a bloodprice to be paid by her friends. Only Rholor’s powerful blessings from earlier in the day had warded most of them from death’s door.
She’d failed Baine, flying him straight into the path of peril she’d known he wasn’t ready to face, especially after what he’d shared last night; seeing him broiled alive, revived by Selûne, and then banished from the battlefield by their foe. At least that kept him safe from further harm she thinks bitterly.
She’d failed Ghesh and Traavor, abandoning them to explore the foul mountain and actually complete the near-suicidal task they had been set; leaving them alone to face being swarmed under by a host of Undead.
She’d failed Taffeta by doing what she’d promised her they wouldn’t do.
I tried to persuade them not to go to the Abyss on a fucking whim She tries to reassure herself That getting involved in the endless feud between the Hells and the Abyss by making a deal with Gorkur, a turncoat general of Asmodeus, to steal a weapon back from Lord Dur, one of the most-trusted vassals of Orcus, was the stupidest fucking idea I’d ever fucking heard.
There had been other options to find the information they needed, but Sunday had been unable to sway the group to what seemed a safer path. She tried to blame Varis and Daisy for that. How could they not know how dangerous jumping into the Abyss would be?! How could they bring the others along But she knows these are hollow words, that the anger and fear is directed at herself.
She knows now what she didn’t know a couple of hours ago.
Earlier, she’d thought that she had been worried about going into the Abyss because of the others, and - by some measure of truth - she had been; but a slow creeping realisation is taking hold: that she had mainly been afraid for herself, afraid that she would die down there. She could feel it still. The total absence of life and light in that place had sickened Sunday to her battered soul. She could still feel its vestigial cold clinging to her bones; the silent roar of anti-life permeating the very fibres of her being.
The fear wells up in her once more. She starts shaking again, bringing her hand up to her mouth as her body threatens to betray her. Fighting the urge to scream in unalloyed horror, she finally pushes herself back up to stand trembling in the gathering gloom of evening. Sunday looks at the weapon people had nearly died to retrieve. And for what? They still didn’t have the information they needed. Just a vague promise from Gorkur that he’d tell them what they needed to know once they returned his prize possession.
Shifting her weight, the hilt of the Infernal Greatsword slung across her back knocks into her temple - reminding her of the deal she’d made with Lothar, the knowledge merchant, an hour or two ago. Reminding her that they still hadn’t finished the job; that they needed to return to Sigil to conclude their bargains.
All this and more flashes through her mind in an instant or two, a flood of conflicting thoughts cold-shocking her limbs into paralysis. But the others are gathering themselves: standing up; looking about; talking about what to do next. Why can’t I move?! Sunday tries to rejoin them; she needs to rejoin them. She realises this is a turning point for her. Through sheer force of will, she takes a step forward, and another - fighting every nerve ending and instinct of her body screaming at her to run and hide and never come back. She crosses the intervening yards as though they were the widest chasm imaginable. Opening her mouth to speak, she strives to keep her tone level - almost icy - trying to project a semblance of her former self, even though she knows it is now lost forever, torn aside like a flimsy curtain in the face of her self-awareness and new-found fear.
“Let’s go back and get what we came for.”
***
Later that evening, Sunday arrives home at Willow Glade.
From her back, she unstraps the hellish weapon she’ll never use and leans it against a rocky outcropping at the base of the gigantic, gently swaying tree. Moving busily, almost urgently, she tidies away the plates and mugs from her earlier meals, and washes her soiled clothes in the stream, humming loudly - too loudly for it to be anything other than an attempt at self-distraction. Leaving her clothes to dry overnight, Sunday looks about the glade, looking for something to do; something that will help her ignore the nagging, questioning voice in the back of her mind.
...Sunday? Are you there..?
She’d been hearing it ever since they’d fled the Abyss; all through their return trip to Sigil; through the debriefing in Varis' office - a meeting she’d barely been able to pay attention to. At first, the voice had been faint, ragged - but it had grown in volume and confusion. Now, it just sounded lost and hurt.
Are you angry with me?
How could she be angry with him? Didn’t he know how afraid she was to face him; to see the marks on his body where the multitude of horrors had scratched and bite and dug; to see gouges and holes ripped in his wings; to see the aftershock of pain and abandonment deep in his hazel-brown eyes.
Please, Sunday, let me come back to you...
She tries to remember what Will told her - that he wouldn’t come if he didn’t want to. But why would he want to? She’d failed him as she’d failed the others, hadn’t she?
SUNDAY!
The force of the silent, desperate shout breaks through her immobilising panic and she drops to her knees for a second time that day. A section of the arcane blockade she had erected tumbles away and eLk steps through the rift from the Feywild into the centre of the glade. Sunday’s eyes are fixated on the ground; she can’t bring herself to raise her head - let alone stand to face her companion.
Two hooves enter the top of her vision, and a warm gust of breath rolls over her as eLk’s muzzle brushes against her cheek. This close to him, she can smell summer; she can feel sunlight; she can sense...hope…
Wrapping her arms around his strong neck, Sunday drags herself to her feet, finally looking at her friend.
Are you hurt?
The rest of the barrier falls away and - tears rolling down her face for the first time in her short, brutal life - she buries her face in his neck, beating her tiny fists against his flanks in impotent anger; in helpless relief. eLk stands motionless, absorbing her pain and fear into the depth of his ancient quiet.
