The Wilted Rose

The Wilted Rose

Postby Teron_Ashfiend » Mon May 21, 2012 8:50 am

It was a small thing, to be sure, left nailed to the door of the Broken Dagger. A small, otherwise innocent thing left for all to see. Possibly, some had remarked, for one or two or a handful of the shady characters known to frequent the Broken Dagger itself. Such seedy types often dealt with their own bizarre language of symbols and markings for smugglers and worse.

When it came to the Broken Dagger, it was more often than not far, far worse.

Yet it had been placed there all the same. A simple thing, as many said, a simple and unremarkable thing. No Note. No demands. Merely an item of no particular import.

A single rose with wilted petals nailed to the front door.

A message left with one person in mind. The messenger waited to see if the gypsy would seek him out.
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Re: The Wilted Rose

Postby Khalika » Mon May 21, 2012 10:53 am

"Teron, Please...I don't want to die alone.."

She awakens to those words once again. This dream on repeat since she touched Myrken soil once again. It was a weak memory for years, though it has grown strong since her return, a heated memory that opens flood gates full. Falling back to the battle, back further to Snowstill, and Caer Gardraark. Words and memories bring sweat to brow each night and have her waking in tremor of cold soaked sheets.

This last night was more vibrant then all the rest, she could smell the blood of the battle field and feel old wounds ache once more. Eyes scroll across the walls as she lifts from her slumber, a trunk lay dust gathered against a wall. She knows what lays inside, what calls her out of her dream, but she is not ready to face the touch of it..

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


A small crowd seems to have gathered around the doorway to the dagger as she approaches. Whispers and hushed comment as they seem to be looking upon something, a quick step is taken then another and she freezes for a brief second and the pinned rose hangs there like a wilted Crosage beckoning a invitation...Reaching through she plucks it from the doorway, even as words whisper ..

Ashfiend..

She's moving now with haste, more then she realizes, towards the farm that is once again her home, he called upon her there once when she seeked to find his common ground, his angles. Now all that are left are the memories of fallen angels, and the blades they carry..

Deliverance...Pulled from the trunk, touched once again it is straped to the back of Ajex saddle and she is fled..Running towards a memory... A place where all things started...

She goes to Snowstill with all haste..to find what's left of hope..
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Re: The Wilted Rose

Postby Teron_Ashfiend » Tue May 22, 2012 11:07 pm

Snowstill has been rebuilt.

The collossal wreck had fallen intot he hands of those who wished to rebuild, repair and make new. The thought twisted tattered lips secreted away beneath the length of coiled gray scarf. What else, he began to wonder, had changed since his imprisonment? How much time had passed?

That question was one of the chief reasons he had left his message for the gypsy. He also began to wonder who else might have taken notice. Perhaps others, the Ashfiend mused, perhaps not. There would be no way of knowing until it others had taken notice and decided to confront the Ashfiend.

He had confronted the defenders of Myrken before.

Lengthy strides had born him to a small copse of trees alongside the road that crawled up the final slopes towards Snowstill Priory. There he stood and waited, crimson eyes flickering like candles in the wind, the breeze toying with the ruined length of his black cloak. The last time he had trod this path, his thoughts stirred, a train of Myrken slain had followed him. Murdered in their homes and fields, his power and hate had called them to follow, serve and endure until their lifeless frames had been purely obliterated.

There was much to remember, Teron thought to himself as his gaze turned outward once more.

There was much to do, and much to learn.
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Re: The Wilted Rose

Postby Khalika » Thu May 24, 2012 8:55 pm

The Gypsy was a ball of uncertain blaze as she pushes Ajex towards Snowstill Priory, it is only the sudden influx of commotion upon a road she would have suspected abandoned. Carts, horse and rider all, are pulling her to slow Ajex's blaze and a sudden familar face has her near haulting..

Jasper Pyke was nothing more then red hair and lank last time she saw him, following the Waystations smith around learning every bit of the trade he could muster, before his enthusiasm would beginn to ware upon the Smithy, and he would send him off to the kitchens.

Yet There he was crowded around a wagon with two other young men. The wagon itself was not of the typical fare. it seemed renforced in places, with a more sterdier wheel alignment. She could not quite make out its cargo as it was wrapped, one thing she could tell, it was stuck.

"Ms. Quiller!"

Busted..The Gypsy angles Ajex more towards the group and their misfortune. The woman has already reconsciled that what she seeked would not be found on this road, for one. None of these people were screaming and running in terror. Though were from labor they seemed to have a feel of accomplishment. This only brought the words of the Governor to the forfront once again., and thinking of him gave her heart burn.

As it was the young smithy was waving her closer to them and as she did she was able to get a closer look at his friends . One held a brown curl to his hair two inches shorter then Jasper, though he held more of a stout girth to him, the other the tallest of the three wore what looks to be parts of a constables uniform. The other parts removed and hanging over the edge of the wagon. They three held a familar tone with eachother that gave the Gypsy to believe they were good friends more then mere passing aquaintances.

"Having trouble with your wagon?"

She was there suddenly still seated upon Ajex, leaning down to get a better look at the issue at hand..

"The wheel cracked when it hit a rutt. Bill and I tried to change it up on our own"..Bill she see is the shorter one the three, who looks up at her when he hears his name. " But its too heavy, even with Garrett here." Now the third looks to her. This one though now upon closer examination receives a slow smile of recognition...

"I see you moved on from sweeping out the stables at the broken dagger, and stocking Daphne-Kyles Pantry?" She asked the young man of 18?..Dear gods when did the childern of Myrken become the men of Myrken...She almost reached over and rustled his hair, the way she use to when he was always under foot, once upon a time he was one of the Gypsy best runner. Now?..Now he wore the colors of the law...

"There was a need" He responded with a casual shrug, tossing back her own words.

The woman only laughed and dismounted.. "Sooo...What are you carrying back here?"

"They're rebuilding the priory, and the terrain and the uneven road have been wrecking havok on the work horse. Me and Mary figured instead of them having to come back to town to have shoes repair. I could set up a make shift smithy at the Priory. There is the remain of a forge there which me and Bill got back in shape and Mary fixed up the wagon. We fasten a work bench , anvil and a place for my tools to the wagon. Except we can't unfasten it all without Mary and we can't lift it with everything inside.."

He was a touch nervous, Jasper always babbled when he was nervous, she start with the obvious.

"Why don't you go get Mary?"

This brought a smirk from Bill and a short laugh from Garrett, Jasper just seemed to give them a look, which had them both go quiet aswell.

"Uh...She's usually too busy." Came the young smithy's quick responce...Though the Gypsy could see the confliction in those words.

Soon enough though a few more returning workers were passing by all talk of Priory, till they spied the Gypsy, the woman could feel their discomfort, and with a sigh and a smile she continued on. they were in good hands, and she didn't want Jasper's confliction to grow. Even Garrett look upon her with different eyes, was he one Burnie's now?...

This and many other things llingered in her thoughts as she moved towards Snowstill, no longer expecting to see who she sought. She wounders now what she was thinking. A rose upon a door?..Fool woman, this place already has you head in a vice, and the Map Maker is twisting it tighter..

the road was thinning now of people as the work day moves to dusk and soon she is walking alone Ajex keeping stride beside her, she has come this far...Might as well see The Priory as it Stands now...
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Re: The Wilted Rose

Postby Teron_Ashfiend » Fri May 25, 2012 6:50 am

The Knights and Derry refugees had begun the project and accomplished a great deal before the dissolution and reassignment of the knightly order to other parts of His Majesty's realm. An end to an order the Ashfiend had nearly single-handedly destroyed. There was so much that he had annihilated or brought to the brink of such: men, kingdoms, wealth, hopes, dreams. All crushed beneath hateful, mailed fists.

Those hands again caught his infernal gaze. Bloodless palms, taut tendons and sharp bone beneath lifeless flesh marred with soot, char and ruin. Hands that grasped murder. Hands that held fire and could not let go. The last thought echoed within his thoughts, raising a banner of destruction for those eyes to wander and marvel at the devestation he had wrought. A banner that eclipsed his vision, that left him blind to the world. Blind to those who approached.

A young pair, boy and girl, children of deacons and the like caught up in each other's affections and the hope of finally being alone. It was a whimsical tunnel that their duckling love created, reinforced, and obscured the world. Obscured the nightmare that stood in the copse of trees. Concealed the terror there until one felt the chill, caught her breath and stared at the figure that loomed over them. And screamed.

The pair scrambled, in their haste fleeing from the copse of trees and further from the priory. They ran from nightmares, from all that they had ever feared given form and frame in undying flesh and livid eyes. Eyes that flared their old, baleful fire as that ruined, wrecked figure moved. On impulse he started after them with a handful of steps that carried him from the trees, called him forth like a blossoming nightmare, mailed hands tensing for slaughter.

The pair screamed in murder, for all those murdered by the Ashfiend, for the sake of their own fates and bodies as the madly dashed down the road in a blind, burning panic.

Until a certain something caught him up short, reminding him of such things as freedom, grace, mercy writ large in blood and in imprisonment. Stunned at his own reaction, and the stirring of that strange and hideous strength within the ruins of his soul, Teron stood in the open and upon the path. He was a towering statue, clad in blackened, battered plate armor and framed in the torn length of a dark cloak with eyes that seared the world with livid, chained fury nestled beneath a dark hood.

Eyes that caught the approach of a lone figure.
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Re: The Wilted Rose

Postby Khalika » Sun May 27, 2012 7:34 am

She heard their cries, then the two Myrken childern were running passed her. Running from the scurge of Myrken. Eyes watched them as they bolted forth toward the exiting workers.

Perhaps she is not such the fool after all? Of course there are those that would think what she was doing now was foolish. Evidence of the Ashfiend return and instead of telling the "authorities" of the possiblity she goes to find him on her own. Of course since her encounter with The Governmaker who stated in so many words that her help or opinion was not wanted nor needed. She'll let them all play "Catch" and see to the possibility of Teron herself..

A possibility she thought less and less possible till she saw the childern running in fear and eyes look to where they came from. A lone figure pulls from the tree line, an all to familar frame moving to stand in her path, now merely 20 feet seperate them as she stops dead. What does one say to the being that nearly ened her life with the grip of an iron fist?

"You left me behind.." Accusations in the form of hello..
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Re: The Wilted Rose

Postby Teron_Ashfiend » Thu May 31, 2012 8:10 am

There are words between this ruin and this gypsy. A speaking of things that has escaped the Ashfiend in his interrment within the sorcerous prison. So close to where it all started, the first battle at Snowstill Priory where the dead arose and Myrken's defenders rode out to meet him, the gypsy has confessed two things and revealed two others. She has revealed that she has kept Deliverance, its dark blade marred with the rivulet of scarlet offered by her palms as she returned the weapon. She revealed that she is not so strong as she has led some to believe.

She has confessed of wanting there to be an ending, and for it to come by his hands. And it is a powerful temptation for one whose sole occupation for six ages of men has been to wreak their destruction. So simple a thing to bring the blade down and bleed her out upon the hungry earth of Snowstill that yet remembered the Ashfiend's shadow.

As that blade is recovered and he spoke to her of freedom, her unbelief in his apparent change has unhooded and unmasked this livid fiend for all the world to see. His ruin is a familiar one to her, pale and impossibly taut flesh, lips frayed like old rope, eyes lit with stuttering crimson flame. A bloody handprint for that face forged in carnage, the gypsy's secret woe, that pleads for release upon his cold, cold flesh.

He had sought Khalika Quiller, rogue and scoundrel of Myrken Wood. Unafraid of Myrken's defenders, her past, or of what needed to be done. There was much that needed to be done and no one else he could appeal to for direction or assistance, as galling as it would prove to be. Before him was a broken wreck of a woman, shattered steel of a blade, nearly useless for anything except for weakening further and breaking entirely.

He could relate only too well.

"I have few answers," Teron begins at length in that empty, hollow voice. "I found nothing, but was found by everything. Everything that is good." A pause here for these words, for those spoken to him at the end of all things and the near unmaking of himself in unearthed sorrow. He turns then, the length of shredded cloak flittering out beyond his broad and armored back. Silent steps heavy with meaning begin to take him the last distance in ascent towards the priory.

"I know you have wandered in darkness, in weeping. Sorrow has called, and you would answer with your own blood." Words are difficult things for creatures of ash and regret. Each syllable hammered into gravelly steel, crawling up from a recently vacated tomb. "I cannot explain it, but I will try. If," he paused, "you will follow."

With that Teron turns and resumes his stride towards Snowstill. His first battle with Myrken would prove to be his first battle against himself. A newly freed fiend has come seeking a minister and found himself needed as a minister. What to offer such a one as broken as the gypsy?

Only, he mused, what had been freely given him.
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Re: The Wilted Rose

Postby Khalika » Thu May 31, 2012 7:37 pm

The world slowly returned to her. That chilled stillness of time slowly melting away as he turns, He was speaking again, again his words are alien things, this was not the thing she had sought out. This..man was a re-encarnation, a waundering husk of what was once know as the 'fiend.

Hands hanging heavy with blood, from so recently clutching the metal form of Deliverance with a raw desperation. She offered it too him, with one request.."To finish it"...But he did not, would not..

the mind boils now with anger, frost bite finger clinched into a knuckle whiting fist digging into the lacerations upon the palms. She wanted to shout and scream at him, pull at the string that once dangle so freyed. But he was moving now taking staps back in time towards the priory, towards the beginnning. No..He would not deny her...the Glorious death.

It was this that thought that pushed her forward, that dragged one step in front of the other. She would not be left behind again..
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Re: The Wilted Rose

Postby Teron_Ashfiend » Sat Jun 02, 2012 12:25 am

Gentleness and kindness are foreign concepts. Appreciated when discovered if only for their rarity. For a hollow manling steeped in destruction and devestation they are nearly impossible and in these moments he would likely have much in common with Ariane as to how difficult such a thing like words can truly be. Here is a once proud woman who has devolved into a shambling wreck and there is only one thing he has to offer her, though the change in this steel-eyed gypsy sparks musings as to how much time has passed.

"You are not the gypsy I knew," Teron begins anew as they ascend the last angled slope to the summit. Torn cloak is a grim train behind him for this display of a ruinous pageant. "You have been broken," that is the word for it. He had seen it before, mostly in defeated enemies. "I know of nothing capable of such. You once defied all of Myrken in order to treat with me."

A glance over his shoulder for the gypsy at this, crimson eye for hers, her posture, her defeat that bows her down and exhausts her steps. "You wear your loss like a chain," thoughts briefly drifting to Valinor and Thrandoll. "I wonder, Khalika, how much time has passed since my imprisonment?"

Teron completes the final crest and the Priory huddles before them in a handful of buildings. Chief among them the steepled chapel itself. Each step towards it is, indeed, a step back in time. In the distance, in his memory, Myrken corpses arise to combat her defenders and he is wading through knights and constables and would-be heroes to slaughter them all. In one corner he dispatched one of the few knights who had come. Upon that rock one of the constables had fired a crossbow meant for the Ashfiend.

In the midst of the confusion his victim, the bar girl, had been rescued and Khalika had stolen along in his shadow steps to the township of Foggy Bottom. There, she had witnessed the doom that had come to Myrken. There, she had pitted her fury against his own and declared herself the victor. The woman behind him, Teron mused, was a far cry from that proud gypsy. There had indeed been a breaking. Perhaps, in the chapel, she might find a healing.

Teron's stride carries him towards the chapel, heedless of the faces that crowd in the windows of neighboring buildings to watch the livid stain of the towering Ashfiend, clad in ruin and armor, marching relentless through their midst.

"For my part," Teron offers as he reaches the chapel's stout double doors, "I was rescued by someone. Someone who might be able to help." With that he pushes the doors open, easily, and waits for the gypsy to see if she will accept his offer. Deliverance, painted black with old blood and touched up with Khalika's fresh offering, still firmly clasped in a mailed hand.
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Re: The Wilted Rose

Postby Khalika » Sun Jun 03, 2012 7:42 am

Metamorphosis...

Transformation....

These things were beyond the Gypsy understanding, even as the Guardian spoke to her of her sisters predicament. Like with her birth, Wryin's Fae and human self were in a battle for dominance, tearing the poor thing to pieces inside. Unlike her birth there was nothing to be done for her, save ease her passing. These things were unacceptable to a Gypsy who has no understanding of can’t. She searched and gambled to try and find an answer. Coming across a possibility, that would send her to the very bottom of the world where Ice bergs loomed like mountains and the air frosted the skin upon contact. The rigid deathly cold was meant to send her human self into forced hibernation. To slow its mechanics and allow the natural Fae transformation to take place, but it was folly. A desperate reach from a sister who wouldn’t, couldn’t let go of her last thread of goodness. Chains snap in the cold of nothing and sent Wryin’s form, encased in ice to fall to the depth of the frozen sea.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was that moment she held to when he spoke again. This revision of what was once Teron Ashfiend. “Not the Gypsy he knew. “….No she was not, she was an empty husk, and her insides are frozen at the bottom of the sea.

“How long?” she repeats in faint echoes as they near the doors of the priory, it stands before her like a monument to all she rejects. Never one to follow the teachings of any religion, she is silent as she follows, led by his voice….

“Too long” comes her response as she passes through, the building dropping around her like a heavy weight, she already feels the suffocation.

The Woman was not looking for rescue, or retribution. She was looking for the end. For the coffin at the bottom of the sea..
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Re: The Wilted Rose

Postby Teron_Ashfiend » Mon Jun 04, 2012 7:06 am

A single step carries him into the chapel, dark and empty. The vaulted ceiling is nearly lost to darkness, the pews uprighted and freed from cobwebs, the shattered roof repaired and all traces of whatever conflagration that claimed it have been eradicated. So too, the signs of the Ashfiend's first stand here against the defenders of Myrken. It was where he had first strangled Myrken with his hate.

The gypsy was ripe with hatred of her own.

Livid, crimson eyes catch the signs that mark her as defeated. Khalika's words speak volumes. Too long, she has said, too long he has been gone. Too long to help, perhaps, to save, or to destroy. Once he had, indeed, rescued her from darkness - from the clutches of the Drow. Many times he had sought to end her, to end Myrken, and indeed to end everything. He was a bringer of such things as endings and finality. How, then, had she meant those words? The offer of bloodied Deliverance helped clarify the query.

"Still you say nothing of what has brought you to this," Teron rumbles to his fatigued companion. The fatigue marks her flesh, eyes, and soul. It is for him to read, like a book, or a twisted sort of mirror. He and the gypsy have had this meeting of sorrows before, with Khalika even having the gall to proclaim herself the victor. "This... defeat."

"You have asked for a glorious ending," he continues in that hollow, echoing voice frosted with the memory of malice, eyes simmering in tamed malevolence. "It will not be glorious, for there are no heroes here, no last stands, no desperate strivings for victory. Only a heartbroken gypsy, and an evil fiend." The sword's handle, grasped with both hands, is twisted. The movement allows Deliverance's tip to rest against the cold, stone floor. Her blood has already shaded the darkened blade's entire length. "But there can be an ending."

"Grace and mercy came for me," he offers at length as the silence between them grows. "He came when there was no where else for me to flee, no more murder and destruction for me to hide behind. He found me when no one else was searching any longer." A pause then, a slight nod for the gypsy's pursuit of him, such as it had been. "When I had exhausted all mortal patience."

"Perhaps now, in your darkness, he comes for you."
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Re: The Wilted Rose

Postby Khalika » Thu Jun 07, 2012 1:52 pm

Defeat?...It was not so much defeat as it was...Failure. Failure to realize her own limitation. Failure to take advantage of what little times was left. She failed Wryin, herself, the crew of the Eagles Passage. How many got left at the bottom of the sea.

She was walking now through the archway, each step a struggle against life..He still speaking this one, This being who speaks of salvation, when once he preached in fire that it did not exsist. How she should laugh, mock, pitty this shell of a 'Fiend.

Nothing comes but silence as she moves slowly passed him, looking mystified upon the spectical before her. Nothing felt so heavy as his questions, his voice moves through her like a ghost, as she drops to her knees. the blood loss it seems is draining the last bit of her strength.

If [I]He[/] would not. She would simply sit there till all blood rushed from her body. To further this along Nails dig into the lacerations tearing and gauging deeper and deeper..

"I can't breath..." It's desperate this gasp of fear..like the thought of why or what has brought her here, sucks the air from her..She cannot yet speak of it...the words are glass in her throat.
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Re: The Wilted Rose

Postby Teron_Ashfiend » Fri Jun 08, 2012 7:12 am

It is a studious gaze that follows the ethereal gypsy, paling beneath crimson eyes as she falls to her knees upon the merciless floor. Her words are a whisper, her being a whisper, weakening and failing even as he watches. That silence continues, broken only by shallow breaths that echo into the silence surrounding them. The weight of sorrow in its fury unleashed upon the gypsy.

Yet it is not sorrow that paints the floor beneath her as scarlet as his cheek.

Teron shifts Deliverance as he closes the distance between them. That whisper reaches up through the strangling exsanguination and taunts with a certain, striking severity. It rebukes his ignorance to the scarlet fundamentals of mortality. It reminds him that people die. In silence he takes the measure of strength that she spills freely, painting the floor as she had Deliverance's blade and his cheek. It was a sign, Teron recognized, that he had seen before - often in those who had become intimately acquainted with his wrath.

Closing the distance between them, Teron slips Deliverance onto his back as he falls to his own armored knees. The creeping chill that lairs protectively about him seeks to crawl over that paling flesh while mailed hands move to encircle her wrists to note those unstoppered wounds. Armored hands that burn with that leashed grave chill that, given her allowance, move to press those bloodied palms together - a gesture symbolic of a simple prayer.

Thoughts turn in his ancient mind unhinged from the steady stream of easy hate. Concern and worry are strange fellows that begin to run amok in thoughts that begin to quicken like a racing heart. There is a place for such medecine as binds the wounds of the living, a place he had heard of in passing, often in the wake of his wrathful shadow.

"Now I will deliver you," he murmurs at length as his ruined cloak descends upon the pair of them, given her cooperation, to once more carry both through the corridors of shadows. In a moment the priory is replaced with the remedium, and a heavy boot is for that door as he seeks to pluck Khalika fully into a dread cold embrace.

Whoever the first person to behold him, towering and clad in that ancient armor with eyes stirring in an easy anger to give shadowy shape to such things as concern, those eyes are for him. And with it a voice that grates and rattles like old, rusted steel drawn in the depths of a deep barrow-tomb.

"Fix her," both command and plea as the chill snakes about them both and even reaching for whatever soul awaits them at the remedium.
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