The #Broken_Dagger Forum

((Note: For clarification, this thread takes place at the Priory of Snowstill, not Stonebrook)

In the last week of her illness, Ariane Emory had paced the confines of her room as if it were a prison cell. She had measured its dimensions with her stride, and found them wanting; she had turned a silver mask over and over between her hands, and listened closely to the revelations that its gleaming lips whispered. "The whole of his plan is to make you suffer," it had confided with Kerrak's voice, and she had nodded her solemn understanding.

It had surprised the swordswoman not at all when Dhrin's emmisary had spoken the very same words, a week later. There had been nothing coincidental in the statement, just as there had been no chance involved in their meeting: mutilated Fawn had been sent, as had the nightmares of long ago, and the waking visions which followed them, and even the prophecies shaped by Aislinn's burning lips. So the words had been accepted without question, and the details which accompanied them, and when their conversation had come to an end



she left the woman in General Eriks' able care, and made haste with Councilor al'Nerun for the stables. He had not offered to accompany her; she had not requested his presence; that they would ride to the Priory together was another thing which was simply... understood. That Jirai would soon follow was also inevitable, for she too had heard the directions Fawn had provided, and perhaps there would be others still to follow her.

Which was just as well. "You will never be rid of him, Ariane, try as you might," battered Fawn had gloated. "If you were able to kill him, don't you think he would already be dead?" It was a familiar sentiment. It was quite possibly even a true one. But what did it matter, when two others rode to do the killing in her stead?

It was something understood. That went beyond the need to ask, or to even offer. For there were, truly, no kind words to offer. No boasting speech to give. In such a task as this, when two rode through the mid of night, there was naught to say. The only thing he had to offer was the calmness of his shoulders. The way his body rode the rolling back of his horse. Ease. They were on a mission to remove a man's head from his shoulders, and perhaps drink the sweet vitae from the ruined throat...

But before then, calm. There would be a time and a place for ruthless anger and the boiling over of emotion. A time and a place to raise the voice and roar with unmitigated rage. That would be at the Priory, once Dhrin was standing before them and Bromn safe. There were things that were understood, even though the two often saw different edges to the same sword. It was understood that he would be there. And it was understood that between the two of them, the three of them even if Jirai indeed showed up, all Hél would break loose within the confines of the Priory of Snowstill...

It was understood. Understood as it always was, between the two women. She would return, for that debt owed.

If her dissapearance when Ariane had begun to question Fawn was abrupt, her reappearance was equally so. She was simply there, loping alongside the two riders with ease, that enchanted crossbow - an appropriate weapon for this mission - cradled in an arm. There were no words, for none were needed. She was content with the thought of the carnage to come.

Altias.

Even through the fog of pain and despair, Altias would easily recognize the deep, resonant voice calling out to him. A soft, unnatural light permeated the cell, throwing shadows helter-skelter.

Is this real? A dream? You don't know; you don't care.

Altias. Rise, and serve as my instrument.

At first the feeling of strong hands grasping his shoulders might shock Altias, but through their fingers and palms emanated a soothing warmth that in turn coursed through his prone body with surprising alacrity.

How can this be? How ... no, it doesn't matter to you. You would take the hand of the Devil himself if it were offered. This, perhaps, is no better.

Do not mistake this for favoritism, Altias.

Quiet filled his body and mind, replacing the doubts and fears, the pain and despair, everything that had come crashing down in these last moments before hope's imminent nova. Lassitude cloaked his limbs in great swathes of wool the color of disease; this too passed into the silence and stillness of death, and all that remained was a dull awareness of himself. Altias was a shell: the agony, physical and mental, was no more; the terrors that were his thoughts and dreams had vanished in the rush of deliverance. Altias felt nothing, whether sensation or emotion, and Altias thought nothing. He embodied cold analysis and calculated vengeance. His limbs surged with strength beyond his own measure, and Altias would find himself no longer paralyzed by exhaustion.

You are alive. Alive! Fear and wonder flicker briefly into existence; they're gone now, snuffed like a candle's weak and wavering flame. You were barely aware of them. What is this? You can't think, can't feel; you're alive, but you're not you.

I do what must be done to tip the scales toward balance.

All aspects of his individual personality suppressed, Altias would find himself fully aware of what was happening to him but unable to care whether or not the effects were permanent. It was a strange thing, like viewing yourself thrice removed -- you, masked with indifference, could watch your helpless self watch your actual self march on, march to oblivion, and your eyes never so much as twitched when death came for you in the form of a beautiful, malachite-eyed face framed by silvery hair.

You recogize that face instantly. Thadius. Your tormentor. Your savior. Your failure. Then a soft, silver-tongued choir whose voices rose and overflowed your mind with jeweled notes laid across black velvet emptiness, and they sang:

Drain his veins of his lifeblood
Crush the hope of his believers
Leave his ashen body for the worms
Drown the vision of his love
Suffocate any thought of reprisal
May you live in torment
May you know not the rush of deliverance
May you be cast into the void of damnation
Suffer, suffer, suffer

Rise, Altias Bromn. Rise, and serve as my instrument. I grant you immunity to pain and fear; I grant you strength from my strength; and most importantly, I grant you freedom.

The hands disappeared from his shoulders, and the chains restraining Altias did not simply unlock; they burst with a shriek of tearing, scraping metal, and for a moment the shrapnel froze in the air, or moved so slowly through it that the chunks of exploded locks and pieces of sundered links seemed frozen. In the midst of that chaos stood not the robed and hooded figure of the past but a ravishingly androgynous, slender being with sandy-colored hair that fell lightly over its ears and brow and honey-golden eyes that leaked soul by the ounce. A black vest, heavily embroidered with intricate thread-of-gold scrollwork, was all that covered its torso, and it wore matching bracers; an ankle-length black silk skirt flowed out from beneath the vest's hem, and beneath that was a hint of sandaled feet.

What...? What is this? Who are you? What are you? Wait -- where are you going?

My offer stands, Governor of Myrken Wood: murder your adversary, and I will teach you how to wield this power for yourself. To fail is to die; to die is to fail. Do not let either happen, for then I must guide him.

The being merely smiled at Altias. Its words were not formed by its lips; those came to his mind, not his ears, and even as they did the being was turning to leave the cell. The various metal scraps in the air parted before him, leaving a clear-cut pathway to the door.

Then, in the shadows ere the door, the being vanished, and with him went the light.

And Altias would realize that this time, he did not have to wake up.

The visions of those he loved were gone. A cold chill, immediately followed by the warmth flowing through him, the voice which had once frightened him so now brought a glimmer of hope into the dispair that had become his existance.

As the being spoke, and worked its magicks, all frustration, fear, hope, love...all of it simply faded into the fabric of time. Leaving in its wake little more than the desire to find and render one Thadius Dhrin back to his base organic parts.

As the darkness faded from his mind, and he was left with the vision of the cloaked one, now so exposed, another Altias would have been dumbstruck by his beauty. Would have been left weak and wanting at the wonderous creature who stood before him as savior. This Altias...felt no such thing. This Altias felt only the need to utilize the strength he had been given to find and destroy Thadius. This time it was not for Ariane, or the town of Myrken, but for himself. For his own desire.

As chains become little more than scrap across the stone floor of the priory, there was what might have once passed as a smile. A hollow gesture now, one expected. A pleasantry, a politness for the man who had brought him back and given him the strength to kill the evil that stalked Myrken.

Altias rose from the floor, a creature still a horror to behold. Blood, both fresh and long dried, caked his hair, his face, his white silk skirt. The fabric was torn and bitten, stained with fluids and filth from the floor of his cell. Once luxurious silken tresses were masses of knots, coiled into matted spirals held fast with straw and blood and sweat. Pale flesh now more resembled that of a fresh corpse, save for his back which was little more than raw meat torn asunder time and time again by the vicious flails and floggers of Thadius.

Before there had even been a chance to accept or decline the offer, it had been accepted by a body so close to death that even his soul had no choice but to take such willingly. There was no time to try and force a mouth so long unsused to form words such as "thank you", he was gone. Somewhere in the back of his mind Altias knew that the price for this would be grave. Here and now...he simply did not care.

With newfound strength and determination, the once governor moved from the cell to find the man who had started a cycle that had once brought Altias and those he loved so much sorrow. Now, he felt no sorrow, he felt no love, he felt only the need to draw the last breath from the lungs of a man whose death would be his salvation...and his damnation.

There should have been portents written in the clouds, on a night such as this. There should have been omens to be read from the twinkling set of the stars, auguries shaped by the dust raised by their horses' hooves, and perhaps there were. The trio's path was marked by many ironies, and this was one of them: that Ariane's habit of surrounding herself with the mundane meant that not a person amongst their number could have read such prophecies anyway.

There should have been fog a-swirl about the horse's legs, and torches burning in their hands to light the gloomy path ahead. There should at least have been a howl of distant wolves, an echoing cry of some night bird. When they passed small huts and homesteads on their way, fearful women should have clutched their children closer; grizzled men should have barred their doors.

We come, their passing should have breathed. We come to murder. We come to burn.

But that is the stuff of children's tales. These are but mortal men and women, and there is little at all to mark that they have passed, that the road has seen travellers at all this night. Their journey is uneventful, and lasts only until they come upon the Priory's great wheat-fields, for it's here that forest gives away to grain, and the last of their cover vanishes. Here, the horses may be tied, so that the dark-clad trio may continue the rest of the way on foot.

There must be care taken here, for there's gravel amidst the dirt of the road, and such is Ariane's wariness that she is loathe to disturb it. That there are no visible guards matters little to her, nor that Fawn had insisted that Dhrin 'expected' them. She, Kerrak, Jirai -- and whatever others that General Eriks might send to follow them: surely they had surprises left in them yet.

It was all that she had left to wager on.

Jirai cared nothing for portents. They lead only to trouble, that she had seen. She preferred to make her own path. And, quite frankly, she was pleased that the journey was silent, uneventful.

As the trio drew within sight of the Priory, a flick of her gloved hand would indicate the building which she and Kerrak's men had been watching for a time, now. The footing of the path was of little concern to Jirai, light-footed thief that she was. Beyond that small gesture, though, the hooded woman would watch Ariane for cues. This was the swordswoman's mission, and she would leave it as such!

That this was Ariane's mission was of no doubt. It was for her that the dark elf and the soldier had ridden, just as much as it was for the governor that the swordswoman had ridden. This truth did not mean that years of habit would melt away from the Councilor. Once they were settled and Jirai had made dexterious motion towards the Priory, Kerrak would raise his hand. A fist made, then a circular motion. Men melted out of the shadows, three to take their horses and three more to join them.

A silent company of death, this. The soldiers were clad in blackened leather and cloth, their helmets were shaped like fire blackened skulls with a fall of horse hair making a fringe 'round the top. One of these was offered to the Captain, and onto his own head did the death mask go. He turned, dark eyes boring out of the metal socket-eyes. He smiled darkly, then slipped his sabre out of it's scabbard. The other three did the same with their short bladed swords, each a quiet hiss of metal 'gainst leather. Angels of Death, and they were ready for her command.

And finally... finally the dour silence would be broken. With sabre like a beam of light in his hand, Kerrak saluted to Ariane. "At your command, my Captain. Lead us into the dark, for we have a Devil to send back to Hél." Silent like the grave, his voice was. It was time to surprise Dhrin, the cant of his lips said. Time to make the world Burn, his eyes screamed. Time to end it all.

There'd been no time to blacken her blade, of course -- no more than there had been to pen a summons for D'zir, a warning for her sister. "He's dying," Fawn had said. It had been all the spur they'd required. So that blade must remain sheathed for now, and there must be a delay for those horses to be drawn quietly away; the jacket must be stripped from her shoulders in readiness for the battle yet to come. And Jirai must be beckoned to her side.

It's a string of hushed words that fall from her lips then, head bowed as she breathes her only instructions to her collaborator: "He may not know to expect you. Approach from the north. Murder him as soon as your aim is true." This last as a hand drops between them, fingertips gentle in their touch to the crossbow's snub nose. No strategist, is Ariane Emory, no leader of men, and perhaps this is the whole of her plan: that Thadius Dhrin will have such concern for swords and frontal threats, that he will not so much as glimpse stealthy Jirai as she approaches his back.

This will require some maneuvering from the drow, for the chapel is not so much large as it is wide: echoing the symbol of the One Faith, the chapel main is bound by a circle wall, as much a tribute to flawless symmetry as is the nave within. There are no rear entrances there, no sly doorways; it is entirely possible that Ariane does not realise this, godless creature that she is. But regardless, this is the whole of that portion of the plan -- and once Jirai has moved away, she is free to attend to Kerrak and his men.

The Captain -- for that was the true nature which lay beneath the guise of Councilor -- had spoken of fires, of flame and rubble. Even now, an echo of such embers smouldered in his eyes, and this once they found no condemnation in her own. She is ash and ice and coldest silver, tonight; here lifts a hand to gesture towards the great wheat-fields that border the Priory to the south.

"He is crazed," she murmurs to her Captain, "so will not recognise threats. But he may yet learn to fear." There is old iron in her veins, cold and impassive; it is with its voice that she speaks now, as she starts down the narrow trail. Winding thin and straight between the fields, it will take her within minutes to the Chapel's doors. "He expects weapons, so instead we shall give him a crucible." And with not a pause to her slow stride, nothing at all but a backwards glance:

"Burn it all."

"Time for a heathen to set afire the fields of God..." The Captain nodded his head slightly, and then stepped forwards. A motion of his hands sent his trio to follow Ariane, whilst he, himself, remounted his horse. With sabre in one hand, and nothing in the other, he rode slowly forwards. Then: A clarion cry for his lips.

"I shall suffer not the unclean to live! Let the holy wrath of the Light consume you!" Kerrak was, after a fashion, a religious man. Just.. not that preached by the men of the Priory. So he had no remorse in setting the fields that abutted it into a swath of flame. "Thadius Dhrin! Prepare to find your succor in the very pit of Hél!" And then his will became manifest.

It took every shred of his abilty to do this, something that Coran would most likely scold him for. But it was for Ariane. It was understood. His vision blackened out as he reached for the Power. It was like fire that froze to the bone, and ice that melted sinew and muscle. Then the layer of filth that oozed over it all like sewer film in a harbor. Through that he reached, his stomach tightening like a vise. To the clean essence of power that waited beyond...

His hand extended, his sabre held high above him. His warhorse reared from a kick of his heels into the beasts flanks. Flames then. A brilliant and bright flow of Fire. The fields would feel the wrath of this, coursing along stalk and heather. Catching all in its path in a wreath of destruction. His mind waivered, horse coming to crash upon the ground. He lost his hold on the power and retched, but the work was done. As soon as he could, his head rose and his death mask was framed in the orange and red glow. Then his voice, quiet in the now fading darkness... "Burn..."

Strategist or no, the swordswoman's words drew a flash of white from beneath her hood, a broad grin that would be the smaller female's only response. The moment that Ariane was done speaking, the scarred woman was moving away, light-footed across the gravel, slipping silently from shadow to shadow to reach the north side of the chapel. Manuvering it might take, but this was her forte, this silent sneaking.

No sooner had she arrived when a flash of light from the other side heralded Kerrak's work, and she was glad enough to have the chapel between herself and the flickering flames - for now, at least.

In the nights that she had spent watching this place for Ariane, she had observed the Priory from all sides, noting the obvious entrance and exit points - and the not-so obvious ones. The latter would be her only option here, faced as she was with a blank facade of wall. She slid along the wall until she was outside one of the roofless courtyards that quartered the structure. Here, she would pause for a moment, ensuring that the crossbow was securely slung across her back, that no betraying hint of pale hair escaped her cowl. Once her preperations were set, she would begin to scale the wall. This would take time. Her waist had not yet thickened enough to hamper what she did, but still, there was some consideration required. As well, every move she made was for silence, above all else.

Eventually, she would reach the top of the wall and, if there was no one already in it, she would slide down into the courtyard.

Altias wound his way from the isolated room that had served as his cell, seemingly moving with an inhuman understanding of a building he had never actually explored. The location of his captor seemed a beacon of fire in the darkness which was the natural state of the Priory.

The creature who stalked the darkened hallways bore small resemblance to the man known as governor Altias Bromn. Pale and cold as the grave, flesh tortured and frayed beyond what a body should be able to withstand. Skin still hung in glistening ribbons from his back, muscle exposed to the chill air. A discarded strip of leather held ropes of matted hair back from his gaunt features. Dull and lifeless eyes searching the shadows for the door. A broken table leg clutched in a white knuckled fist.

The door before him seemed to glimmer in his sight, as if something was leading him to his prey. A few moments were taken outside the room, his breath nearly as still as the stagnant air around him.

~Drain his veins of his lifeblood
Crush the hope of his believers
Leave his ashen body for the worms
Drown the vision of his love
Suffocate any thought of reprisal
May you live in torment
May you know not the rush of deliverance
May you be cast into the void of damnation
Suffer, suffer, suffer~

The chorus echoed in his mind, feeding the fire in his veins. Though no change came upon his narrow features.

~To fail is to die, to die is to fail~

"Then I shall not fail..."

The words barely a whisper in the thick darkness, as his hand came to rest upon the door.

In the light of a single oil lamp, Thadius Dhrin sat upon the aged wooden chair he had placed upon the pulpit. It seemed a regal thing in the ruins of the chapel, though chipped and frayed. Bits of gilded paint littering the floor around it, surrounding it in a strange glittering halo of light.

His thin frame was clothed in his best platinum robe. Silver hair freshly washed and combed. He was an angelic vision, as he had been when first he had entered the Broken Dagger.

In his lap were perhaps 2 dozen folded paper swans. Light blue and green. Each contained one word, hidden in their deceptive folds.

Fingers rested lightly upon the arms of the chair, pale gaze resting on what appeared to be the only entry to his sanctuary. Tonight would be a legendary event. Something that would live in the minds of the Faithful for all time.

"Come. I wait for you. The masses of the ignorant. The anger of the the NonBelivers will be wasted in the darkness."

Satin words falling into shadow, not for one man, but for all. Thadius Dhrin waited for those he knew would come. Waited for deliverence.

"What is your heart's desire?"
"To be one with Him."
"Do you go to Him with a joyous heart?"
"I do this for Him."

"Then let it be so."


This is how she makes her approach upon the holy place: with an assassin darting ahead, and great walls of flame to flank her path. By the time she has neared the chapel's doors, it has become a vast, burning ocean, rippling in broad waves with each gust of the night's winds. It lends a murderous tint to the steel of her eyes, a ruddy glow to her cheeks as she passes through its midst. So great is its heat that the very air ripples, and the palms she touches to the doors find a little warmth in the wood. But no resistance.

There is only the crackle of flames to announce her entrance, for the door admits sparks along with the swordswoman, and a breath of burning air to coil about her boots. Even the interior is illuminated by Kerrak's unnatural gift: golden light dances about the arches and corners of the tall roof, putting the oil lamp upon the pulpit to shame. It glitters in the corners of leaded windows, dances across the marble features of the Pontifex and his saints so that they seem to look to and fro, this way and that, but always with condemnation. Always with cold wrath. They are excellent companions to a woman whose eyes hold nothing else.

"Only death could make you kneel."
"Only you...could make me kneel.

After so long a ride, her approach to the pulpit seems almost disappointingly brief. This is not Orvere: there are no armies through which she must carve to reach her aim, and the flames do not so much as threaten the stone walls. There is simply Thadius Dhrin, enigma, tormentor, seated alone upon the pulpit like a prince whose kingdom is lost to ruin.

To madness.

He is a beautiful thing -- exquisitely, bitterly beautiful -- but she had learned an immunity to such things long before she had trod upon Myrken ground. There is a hint of crimson to his glossy hair, but she knows that to be an illusion of the flames; any likeness is nothing but coincidence, and banished with a touch of teeth to her own lip. The taste of copper, the memory of red-scrawled words, drives away what compassion might have remained in her, and what climbs towards that pulpit is as cold as the marble saints that watch from their alcoves.

"It didn't have to end like this," she breathes in these final moments, a whispering echo of Dhrin's own, long-ago words. But the schiavona proves the lie in those words, leaping into her hand like a living, glittering thing as she lunges for that ruined throne.