[Mkguild] Winter Assault - Murikeer's sections, pt 2

[Ryx]

Part 2


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December 26, 5:30am
“Kill him!” the mage shrieked, his hand outstretched as he pointed a slender
stick toward his captured foe, “I cannot hold him!”

Murikeer snarled at the strange magic the man had cast upon him, cutting him
off entirely from Metamor’s magic flow, and glared angrily at the half dozen
mercenaries attending the mage.  He had
come upon them unawares and managed to burn two of the soldiers down before the
enemy mage erected a hasty shield.  He
still had his inner reserves, those already drawn from the cold stones of the
Keep, but he could not press them beyond the mage’s shield.  Most of his attention was on the barring
spell as he tried to break its simple but highly effective ensorcelment.  Four of the mercenaries advanced upon him
with swords, gleaming polished steel well whetted to keen, deadly
sharpness.  The two remaining moved to
the mage’s side and unlimbered the crossbows they carried upon their backs.

“Quickly!” the mage barked, straining as Muri assaulted his magic from
within.  The young mage had already found
its basic weave and yanked savagely at it with his own magical powers, warping
and twisting it but unable to break it easily.  It would break, he could feel it weaken even as he poured his magical
strength into rending it.  “Don’t bandy
about, stick the misbegotten beast!”

“Tell me where Thorne is, mage, and I will kill you swiftly.” Murikeer
snarled as he felt the binding spell wavering.  He could see the tendril of it extending from the wand giving him a very
simple thread along which to attack the focus itself.  “Otherwise, you will die slowly and tell me
all.”

A mercenary leaped in and thrust his sword at Murikeer but the skunk twisted
with the flexibility of his curse gifted species and the sword merely graced
bruisingly across his ribs.  He grunted
and snarled, lashing out with one hand to rake at the man’s face with claws
capable of shaping stone.  With a curse
the man jerked his head back while the other three came in a concerted group
from three sides.  Dancing back Murikeer
spun about and, bending forward, raised his tail and loosed a blinding spray of
his natural musk.  One of the swords
scored across the crest of his tail but the others missed and all four soldiers
retreated with cries of horror.  They
clawed at their faces, managing not to drop their swords by sheer military
discipline, and choked upon the overwhelming fetor of the skunk’s musk.  Even the mage and the crossbowmen gagged and
fell back allowing Murikeer a last moment to finally shred the wavering spell
severing him from the Keep’s power.  It
collapsed and he sent a surge of raw manna along the spell strand from the
wand.  The wood let out a single tortured
squeal and shattered in the mage’s hand.

With a curse the mage dropped the wand and jerked back his bloodied hand as
slivers of shattered wood tore at his flesh.  He threw out his other hand and screamed a hasty string of words in a
long disused language, wracking Murikeer with sudden agonizing pain.  The skunk let out a shriek of his own, body
bowing back under the blinding pain and tied to clutch at the new magical
weave.  The mercenaries, still hacking
and pawing at their faces, fell back and did not press their advantage, unable
to breathe or see for the stinging spray in their eyes and burning at their
skin.  After several failed attempts
Murikeer found the mage’s spell weave and, clutching a single thread of it,
wrenched the spell savagely.  The mage
cried out in sympathetic pain as the skunk’s magic reached out and leeched his
own manna directly from him in a single overwhelming surge.  He staggered and clutched at the cluster of
stone beads about his neck, drawing more magic from them to replenish what
Murikeer had stolen.

Freed from the severing spell and pain Murikeer stood tall once again and
reached out for the Keep’s magic, feeling the resistance of it under whatever
stilling spell laid upon the Keep, and was unable to draw upon it fully.  Even muted he was able to siphon away enough
to fortify himself and erect shields against any more magical attacks from the mage.  With a pair of loud cracks the crossbowmen
finally released their bolts but, half blinded by the gagging stench, their aim
was far from perfect.  One left a lance
of pain across the edge of one ear, snapping Murikeer’s head to one side as it
tore through the thin membrane of flesh, while the other merely added another
hole to his already woebegone finery.

Maintaining his shields Murikeer brought his head back around and snarled,
advancing upon the septet, ignoring another crossbow bolt hastily loaded and
loosed as it slid from his shield.  “Tell
me where Thorne is before you die.” He growled furiously, raising one hand with
the blinding radiance of a readied arcane bolt.  Still half blind and fighting back the urge to retch one of the soldiers
advanced to stand before the mage, sweeping his sword ineffectively at the
skunk well beyond his reach.  He fell a
moment later, twitching and crackling, as the skunk sent that bolt into the
center of his chest.  Down to six, they
fell back with the mage to their rear, toward the doorway they had been trying
to batter down when the skunk came upon them. “You’ve nowhere to go, yield.”

The mage flung something small toward Murikeer and the skunk seized it from
the air with a swift magical grasp.  Before he could identify the purpose of the small stone the mage
revealed it; with a strangled word the stone detonated in a fiery blast.  Murikeer chirped in pain as the searing
shards tore through his fur to score the flesh beneath, setting both fur and
clothing aflame briefly.  He batted at
the smoldering remnants as the soldiers tried, once more, to batter through the
door.  Growling past the sharp, stinging
pains Murikeer loosed a harsh wave of force that slammed them all mercilessly
against stone and wood.  The door cracked
but did not fail as two soldiers slammed into it face first and fell, their
helmets crushed about the remnants of their skulls by the impact.  None of those who remained had fared a great
deal better, staggering and slumping as they groaned in pain.

“I,” gasped the mage, holding up one hand futilely toward Murikeer as the
skunk advanced, three of his fingers clearly broken by the impact, “I do - he
is – he -” he managed to force out, blood welling between his lips.  His eyes rolled up as his body slumped in
death and Murikeer snarled a curse.  Only
one of the mercenaries had enough life left in him to push his sword at
Murikeer but the angry mage merely slapped it out of the way and kicked him in
the face.  He sprawled as Murikeer
advanced past him to the door, pulling it open easily.

Beyond was a devastated hall.  Statuary littered the floor and snow filtered down from a gaping hole in
the roof high above.  A still frigidity
hung over the silent place and Murikeer stopped to gaze at the sheer
destruction.  A single giant lay not far
away, its head little more than a skull savagely stripped of flesh.  Claw marks marred the tattered remnants of
leather armor.  Nearby were a handful of
likewise deceased wolves but none like Murikeer had ever before come across
though he had heard their howls in the north.  Keletikt had bade him to be wary of those songs with the fear of prey
hearing the voice of a top predator.  Lutins had mastered some of them, dire wolves, but those that still ran
wild were a bane upon the tribes.

Why they would be rampaging about the Keep attacking Nasoj’s own forces
Murikeer could not understand.  Casting
about the hall to be sure that none remained to finish off the unwary he
advanced cautiously through the wreckage.  Few of the statues were identifiable, shattered in the battles that had
raged in the hall and punched that gaping hole above.  He found the head of one, Orvid the first
Duke of Metamor, lying at the base of the empty plinth that bore his name.  The chipped marble face gazed up at him as if
in rebuke and, with an atavistic lift of his lips, he stepped around it.
He found something slouched against the far side of the plinth that stopped
him dead in his tracks and caused his knees to quake; a charred, barely
recognizable corpse. It was shrouded in the remnants of a charred green gown
and upon its blackened breast was a single gleaming yellow stone.  Silver had melted into the victim’s tortured
flesh and the stone was smutted by soot and singed fur but shone with a muted fire
under the gleam of Murikeer’s witchlight.  He slumped to his knees beside the charred
remains and dropped his head, plunged into darkness when his witchlight flared,
wavered, and faded from existence.  He
reached out to touch the sunken cheek of the ravaged flesh with his fingertips
and, for the first time since the first savage attack that had begun his
rampage, gave over to wracking sobs of soul numbing grief.  

What lay there, slumped in impotent death against the plinth, was his
love.  Her death had been so abrupt, so
senselessly pointless, he could not begin to grasp the meaning of it.  She, a warrior and free spirit, would have
done so much more than he in these trying, deadly times.  His last words had been one of anger, words
of repudiation for all that he had for her.

He had denied their love, and she had perished.  Thorne’s thunderbolt had cut her down before
he could even feel the weight of those words, before he could take them
back.  Now he would never be able
to.  Taking up the charred ruin of her
hand he bent over Llyn’s corpse and wept only as the soul shattered could ever
weep, bereft to the core of his very being, heedless of danger, and the hall
echoed it back to him as if it, too, wept for such senseless death.



      

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