[Mkguild] MK: Homecoming (2/3)

[C. Matthias]

>     "The creature you will be facing," Malger 
> had said just before their departure, "is 
> called the Beast of Revonos, and he is aptly 
> named.  He was once a Keeper that each of you 
> knew.  What he has become now is a weapon, a 
> living embodiment of chaos and destruction, 
> deliberately and powerfully designed by Lord 
> Revonos.  We do not know how much of his mind 
> remains, nor what state it is in.  I'm sorry, 
> Misha, but the odds are very good that he will 
> not remember you.  If you want to survive, you must help him to do so."
>
>     Raven had weighed in next.  "When you find 
> him, remember this above all else: do not 
> attempt to combat him by matching strength 
> against strength.  You will lose.  Contests of 
> power are what he knows, and where he 
> excels.  If you play by his rules, he will 
> destroy you utterly.  Remember from where he 
> comes: the court of the Lord of Betrayal.  The 
> Sixth Hell does not countenance co-operation, 
> so it is unfamiliar to him.  Work together... 
> or die separately."  The wolven priestess 
> turned a worried gaze on Merai.  "The gods have 
> forbidden me from going with you, and you will 
> be both uniquely strong and uniquely vulnerable 
> against him.  You know of what I speak.  Beware 
> the shadows.  Remember your training."  She 
> unbuckled the holy sword Elemacil from her 
> waist and handed it over to the young 
> priestess.  "Bear this well, Priestess 
> Merai.  May the High Lord Kammoloth guide you and keep you safe."
>
>     The final word had come from Duke 
> Thomas.  "If you take him alive- I'm sorry, 
> Misha, but I will not risk your lives with 
> anything more restrictive than that- if you 
> take him alive, he is to go directly to the 
> dungeons, to be kept under strict ward and 
> guard.  If he is found competent, he will stand 
> trial for the deaths and damages he caused 
> three months ago.  If he is not competent, 
> then... we'll see.  Be very, very careful."

The last three paragraphs are nice asides that 
set up the danger of what they face very well.

>     Saroth's wingbeats faltered, a telepathic 
> bow wave of shock radiating from him.  Misha's 
> head snapped up, wondering what had so startled 
> the dragon, and his jaw dropped open as the 
> veil of smoke parted.  Absolute devastation 
> unfolded before them, stretching from horizon 
> to horizon.  As far as the eye could see, trees 
> had either been blown down or snapped outright, 
> stripped of limbs and even bark.  Fire had 
> scorched them where they lay.  Hot patches 
> still smoldered, lingering embers from a great 
> conflagration that had since passed on.  In the 
> middle of it all gleamed a strange, perfectly 
> circular ring of barren, darkened ground.  And inside that


Nothing but fulgurite glass left there.

>     {Yes.  Bodies.  Lots of them.  And it looks 
> like many of them weren't killed by the 
> blast.  Misha, I don't think you should use the 
> teleport disk here.  The magic
}  He struggled 
> for words.  {It feels as if reality itself is 
> scarred.  The sky is in pain.  I would advise 
> against any use of magic at all, if it can be 
> helped, at least until we are well away from here.}

Nice intro of the teleportation disk.  Always good to have an escape route.

>     With a gesture, Misha sent the two dragons 
> back into the sky, circling overhead like 
> aerial cavalry, while the four groundbound 
> Keepers closed in on the source of the 
> sound.  The dead lay everywhere: under the 
> wreckage, on top of it, whole, in pieces, and 
> every possible variation in between, all under 
> the unforgiving glare of the merciless 
> sun.  Those that had not burned outright were 
> quickly beginning to putrefy.  The stench of 
> death was indescribable.  The silence was 
> almost worse.  It pressed down with almost 
> palpable weight, magnifying a whispered comment 
> into a careless shout, a minute shift of rubble 
> into an echoing avalanche, and transforming the 
> recurring moan from afar into a beacon of 
> unending suffering.  Misha was reminded of the 
> days after the tornado had struck Keeptowne- it 
> had taken three days for the songbirds and 
> insects to return, and the silence had been just as deafening.

People have no idea how remarkable actual silence 
is until they experience it.  It is deafening 
because the lack of noise is all you can hear, if that makes sense.

>     Not trusting the hell-touched strip of 
> obsidian glass, Misha vaulted it using Whisper 
> as a pole.  Charles did likewise with his 
> Sondeshike, and then tossed it back to help 
> Wolfram across.    The lutin was not the only 
> creature that had tried to leap the flame wall: 
> as they closed on the sound of the moaning, 
> they found many other skeletons and 
> half-skeletons.  The worst was the giant that 
> had fallen half across the blaze and then 
> dragged its cauterized, half-incinerated body 
> for another ten feet before dying.  Misha 
> prayed that the trail of blackened, roasted 
> organs would not haunt his nightmares.

Given all the blood and death he's already seen, 
to have anything more cause him nightmares is scary itself!

>     Then they found the werewolf.  Twenty feet 
> up a splintered oak, impaled through his chest, 
> gut, and thigh by scorched tree limbs as thick 
> as a man's arm, only his lycanthropic 
> regeneration had saved him from instant 
> death.  Even that was more of a torment than a 
> blessing, as he could not free 
> himself.  Grizzled fur streaked with coagulated 
> and dried blood, a pink froth bubbling at the 
> corners of his mouth, the beast moaned in agony 
> with each breath.  His lips twitched as if he 
> were trying to say something, but Misha 
> couldn't make it out from the ground.  Wolfram 
> stepped up next to Misha, drawing in a breath 
> through his teeth as he sized up the 
> situation.  "I'm assuming you want him alive?"

Good trick making a plus a minus here with the werewolf's regeneration.

>    "We can," the ram interrupted.  "It will be 
> tricky, but we can.  Better get 
> started."  Scaling the tree with surprising 
> efficiency, he revived the beast with a careful 
> drink of water.  The offer of help received a 
> faint nod in reply, and the ram signaled for 
> Saroth and Tychicus to land.  It took both 
> dragons at their largest size to ease the tree 
> down without jostling its captive, and the 
> beast bit on Charles' Sondeshike while Wolfram 
> and Merai carefully extricated the tree limbs 
> from his body.  Misha kept Whisper close as the 
> wounds healed, but even when physically 
> restored, the werewolf proved to be in no shape 
> to fight.  He didn't much care that he'd been 
> rescued by Metamorians, just so long as "that 
> beast, that bloody Beast" was gone.  His hands 
> shook with fear, trembling so badly that he 
> spilled as much water as he drank.  He didn't seem to notice.

I like that you have them using the Sondeshike 
like this to keep the werewolf from screaming or eating its own tongue.

>     "'Let's catch it!' they said!  'We'll 
> sacrifice it to the Queen!' they said!  Stupid vampires!  Stupid!  Stu-"

I love this bit here.  Vampires are stupid. ;-)


>     "Hold."  The voice was neither loud nor 
> harsh, but radiated such a potency of command 
> that everyone froze in their tracks as if 
> paralyzed.  A woman stepped from the shadows, 
> her hair the color of pitch and her eyes like a 
> starless night; like a raven, bereft of pupil 
> or white.  Clad from neck to sole in 
> intricately tooled black leather armor and 
> flanked by a pair of glowering dire wolves, she 
> radiated an aura of dark nights filled with 
> watching, hungry eyes.  The werewolf toppled 
> forward and kowtowed instantly to the ground, 
> his rant silenced.  Behind her, the spiders 
> could be seen arriving from the west, a 
> black-and-gray swarm that made short work of the tree-strewn ground.
>
>     Ears flattened and hackles rose throughout 
> the group as Merai put a name to the new 
> arrival.  "Lilith."  The Keepers backed away 
> from the daedress and closed ranks, spells and 
> dragonflame ready to blast an escape route if necessary.

Charles meanwhile is thinking, "My 
Collect-All-Nine Daedra collection is now 
complete!"  Actually he's more thinking, "Oh sh..  Oh sh.. Oh sh..!"

>     The woman nodded slightly in mocking 
> acknowledgement of the move, but waved her hand 
> in a dismissive gesture.  "At your ease, 
> Lightbringer.  For now, I have no quarrel with 
> you, nor with your companions.  We share a 
> common cause: you want your wayward beast, and 
> I want him gone from my lands as soon as 
> possible.  Do not invite more trouble than you 
> already have."  As the spiders encircled the 
> group, she pointed to the ground before her.  "Come here, William."

The werewolf being named William just humanizes 
him all the more.  I like that touch.

>      The werewolf crawled to her on all fours, 
> whimpering and groveling.  "I-I'm sorry, m-my 
> Lady.  I failed you," he stammered when he 
> finally reached her, his tail tucked and his 
> ears lowered, his trembling returning 
> twofold.  His head and eyes he kept averted, 
> expecting punishment.  "I sh-should have-"
>
>      Lilith stopped him with a single finger 
> laid on his nose.  Cupping her hand under his 
> chin, she lifted it until he met her eyes and, 
> to the astonishment of all, she smiled.  A 
> reserved smile, the smile of a queen to a lowly 
> and meager servant, but still a smile.  "You 
> were completely out of your depth, my boy.  I 
> would sooner expect a mouse to kill a mountain 
> lion than expect you to battle the Beast of 
> Revonos.  Even the fiercest of predators must 
> run sometimes."  She stroked his gray-furred 
> cheek with an almost maternal touch.  "That 
> you've survived at all suggests you're strong 
> enough for greater things."  She stroked his 
> fur for a bit longer, soothing him until his 
> tailtip wagged, and then turned her attention to Misha.

I'm honestly reminded of Gmork and his pups in this scene.

>     Charles' brow furrowed for a 
> moment.  "Wait.  Does that mean that, to the 
> lutins, we live in the Valley of the Shadow of 
> Death?"  Misha snorted, his mouth quirking up at one corner.

Ah, an attempt at levity!

>     The release provided by the wry humor 
> lasted until the two got down from Saroth's 
> back and found themselves standing in a pair of 
> pawprints
 with room to spare for each of 
> them.  Wolfram and Merai climbed down from 
> Tychicus, and the ram sized up the situation in 
> a single sentence.  "We're going to need a 
> bigger dragon."  Tychicus and Saroth exchanged 
> a glance as they shrank down to join the ground 
> crew, but said nothing.  They pulled on a pair 
> of robes for clothing, easily shed in case of an emergency shift.

Channeling your inner Brody I see!

>     "This one is, too," Charles replied, his 
> Sondeshike making a faint clink when he prodded 
> the headless corpse of a werewolf.  "When I 
> fought him in Hell, he could exhale a wave of 
> ice.  It appears that he still can."
>
>     "Well, it appears he's been improving," 
> Wolfram snapped, shaking his hand again to try 
> to get feeling back into it.  Breathing hard 
> across numbed fingers, he then stuffed them 
> into his right armpit to warm them more 
> quickly, just above the rim of his 
> breastplate.  "You said he froze your feet to 
> the ground.  You never mentioned anything about instant frostbite."

I should reread the battle sequence because I 
don't recall him freezing Charles to the ground 
right now.  I'm sure it happened, but it has been 
a while since I looked over that fight.

>     "I'll be okay, I think."  Wolfram clicked 
> the hooflet-capped fingertips of his unfrozen 
> right hand together.  "If I had bare flesh 
> instead of hooves, I think I might have left 
> behind a few layers of skin.  Still... that's really cold.  Don't touch them."

Good touch here with noting the different finger 
structure of our beastly Keepers.  Always good 
when it works to their advantage!

>     Misha frowned.  "That's why we have gloves, 
> Wolfram.  Wear them.  Merai, can 
> you-  Merai?"  To Misha's surprise, the 
> priestess had knelt to the ground, her forehead 
> pressed against the sinuous spine of the holy 
> blade Elemacil.  Her lips moved faintly, her 
> eyes closed in concentration or prayer, or 
> perhaps both.  Was it his imagination, or was the sword starting to glow?

Always nice to see a group actually 
prepared!  Still, those had better be good gloves!


>     "No.  A daedra, or someone they have 
> altered as radically as they have your friend, 
> can perform a temporary empowerment, an 
> enhancement of aura, allowing him to cut 
> through the defenses of an aedra or those of 
> their servants.  For example, me.  If you see 
> the shadows 'pull' toward him, wrap around him 
> like wisps of flame, he's using it.  It's unmistakable."

And I bet it's wicked cool looking too.  This is 
why we need to have Metamor Keep the TV show so we can see all this happen!

>     Merai nodded.  "Misha, there's something 
> you should know.  What he's done, the 
> continuous power he's displayed since his 
> arrival... as far as everything I've ever 
> learned tells me, what he's doing is 
> impossible.  I would expect this level of 
> destruction if we were chasing down a young 
> daedra noble, a scion of the daedra lords, but 
> a mortal?  Even one who has been the personal 
> project of a daedra lord, as Charles' tale 
> seems to imply?  This does not make sense.  He 
> should not be capable of maintaining this level 
> of power separated from the Lord of 
> Rage.  Something is very-"  Her eyes snapped 
> open, her ears backing in shock.  Now Misha was 
> certain the sword was glowing, because for a 
> moment so were her eyes.  "Very wrong."

Yeah, I always start worrying when people's eyes 
start glowing too!  Awesome effect!

May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love,

Charles Matthias