Deidre Dydi

Deidre grimaced as the illusion gave yet another speech. More riddles, and tests of the brain. Stuff for stuffy academics in their studies, cared for and pampered by the movers and doers. She'd never had the interest for that kind of thing. Or even the ability to sit still for long enough. So she leaned against her staff sullenly as the others talked and inspected, her staff leaning at an increasingly impossible angle as her boredom grew.

At one point Amel began handing out hands, for what purpose Deidre couldn't imagine. When she was handed hers, she got about half a second into some vision before tossing the thing over her shoulder to crash against the ground. "The top of the tower is toppled, I think. So if he bites it, I'm just heading outside and getting in that way."
 
Sir Amel
@Holmishire.

"I appreciate the vote of confidence," he said, intending to be snide—but he couldn't help but let slip a hint of worry.

"Take the sword and shield as a pair, if one you must take; they were a gift from my father." Sir Amel grimaced. "If I do… perish. Please send word to the Lord and Lady Caphea. They, at least, can let my family know." With that, he pressed his hand forward, into the wall.[/hr]
 
As Amel's hand pressed into the shallow depression in the door, the magical energy it held flared to life with a crackling sound like dozens of tree branches being snapped and shattered. A sickly green glow emanated from the runes all around the stone for a brief moment, and then suddenly the noise and light disappeared entirely. Amel could hear a series of clicks from internal mechanisms at work in the door, and a low scraping sound could be heard as it started to slowly open on its own.

"Yes, well done." Another illusory image of Highlord Bressos appeared in the air in the center of the room, facing toward the door. "Often the truth lies beyond the obvious and right in front of your nose, all at once. This is the forbidden truth the Lords of the Moon unveiled: the gods are ascended from mere mortals. The means of this ascension are still being researched, but know that speaking of this truth outside of this room, shielded from the prying eyes and ears of gods by decades of painstaking warding work, will invite death and destruction upon you and all who hear it. I shall return shortly, and until then you may wait in my sanctum above. Eat and drink freely of what my constructs provide, and peruse my books at your leisure, but speak naught of what you have just learned unless you return to this very room. Your journey to join our ranks is nearly over, and I shall guide you to the end once I return."

The speech and door had very obviously been synchronized, given the way the door's slow opening finished at exactly the same moment the illusion dissipated. There was another curving flight of stairs leading upward, and with the illusion gone they could now hear a continuous low murmuring drifting down from above. Rather than pursue that oddity, Jehan shook his head vigorously for a moment before heading straight for the stairs leading down, and those who managed to get a glimpse of his eyes could see that same disconcertingly sharp and bright cast to them that Griselda and Lienne had possessed when they started behaving strangely.

Torgun held up a hand and opened his mouth, but one pointed glance from Jehan was enough to dissuade him from trying to stop the Elf from leaving. Instead he directed his words to those who remained more or less in control of themselves. "I think I've decided that I really fucking hate this place. I don't give a shit about gods and whatnot, don't know that it matters how they're made. Let's just get this over with, eh? And you, keep hold of the nice kitty." As he passed by Wank, the Dwarf noted the now familiar confusion on the Goblin's face and guided him over to place a hand on Masawa to act as a guide, much like the cat had done for Jehan and Arwen on their way through the maze below. He ascended the stairs quickly but quietly, pulling his battleaxe free and gesturing for the others to follow him.

The chanting grew louder and louder as they went up, and by the time an opening appeared at the top of the stairs it was clear that the masculine voice was in fact shouting his words rather than speaking them. It was a harsh and caustic language, one that none of them knew, and it neither slowed nor stopped as Torgun cautiously poked his head up to see what was waiting for them. He pulled back and looked at the others with a confused grimace, then boldly walked right out into the open. Some low chittering noises started up, and any who followed him would see that they came from the three imps in the room, but the chanting never even wavered. The imps looked to their master for guidance, rather than immediately attacking, and they received nothing at all. The Human man looked the stereotype of a foul summoner of demons: pale skin, long and greasy dark hair, and features sharp and gaunt enough to make him look almost feral. Strangely, his eyes also hard the same too-bright and painfully intent quality that had just taken over Jehan before the Elf departed their company.

The room had perhaps at one point been lavishly furnished, but it was now decayed and wrecked, with rubble from the collapsed roof taking up a good portion of the floor. Near the center of the room there was a wide wooden beam, and it was currently being used as a makeshift bed, or perhaps an altar. A blonde Human woman, no older than her late teens or early twenties, was laid out unconscious on the wood with a tattered robe preserving her modesty. Her hands and feet were both bound by rope, and the man was using some kind of sharp metal instrument to etch runic markings on her flesh. Her face and one bared shoulder were already covered, and he was almost finished with her left arm as well. Each rune flashed with a dull red light as it was finished, then faded into an inky black color, and at the start of each new rune the man primed his instrument with more of his chosen ink: his own blood, courtesy of a large cut on his forearm. He showed not a single sign of realizing he had company, and as one of the imps tried to shake him he swatted it away with his bleeding arm without slowing his work. The three imps then gathered protectively in front of the unconscious woman, hands poised to start hurling fire, but they kept exchanging uncertain glances with one another.

Torgun looked back to the others with a confused shrug, wordlessly asking them what they wanted to do with this strange situation.
 
  • According to Plan
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Amel grimaced as Jehan, too, found himself possessed by the fouled leylines. Time was running out.

Pulling his glove firmly back into place, he drew his arms and followed close behind Torgun as the dwarf pushed his way up the stairs. As such, he was among the first the burst into the room, and quick to take in the situation—one mage, one princess, three imps. A nuisance of thought, as inconsequential as it was brief, noted the imps' apprehension. Was it fear, or something else?

No matter. Demons would receive no mercy.

"Take your hands off her!" Sir Amel swept in from the left with Porce lifted to his right shoulder, ready to bat aside the first swath of flames and then stab into the left-most imp.
 
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Oh, Wank thought to himself in the midst of his barely cast-off stupor, maybe he really ain't a healer...

His gnarled hands flashed with a natural quickness that belied his previously confused state, sparks shooting off from the tips of his index fingers like the ends of a malfunctioned wand or rod. Each hand, a single pointer finger extended, beckoned towards an imp yet untargeted by Sir Amel. With a crackling, a spout of fire emerged from both, diminished without both hands to channel them but perhaps enough to aid the party's cause.

"Is dat mah princess?" He roared, reinvigorated.
 
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Yazmina Boelner

Alive || In a decrepit tower, West of Varden || With: Everyone


For the tense few seconds during which Sir Amel pressed his hand on the door, the fighter could feel her heart pounding right into her ears and it took some effort not to let out an audible sigh of relief when the illusion appeared again. Fucking magic nonsense. Without any hesitation, she followed the group upstairs, sword drawn out and shield in front of her. The sight that met them was gruesome, but Yazmina had a sinking feeling they were just in time. The poor girl was probably a device to summon some other stronger Demon, or perhaps something more horrific. But now was not a time to speculate.

"We have to stop him before he adds more... Whatever he's writing on her. You guys take care of the imps." Yazmina murmured a few words to cast Shielding magic on herself and Brauhm's Shield. Once she felt the familiar pull inside of her, she allowed a savage grin to spread across her face and headed right towards the possessed Human, intending on knocking him out with her shield. Something was telling her she should keep him alive, but if he resisted or tried anything more on that girl, she would not hesitate even one second to make him taste the steel of her blade.





 
At first, the apparent demon summoner gave no reaction whatsoever the attackers. Amel's shout was disregarded, and he just continued with his work on the unconscious girl. As Amel, Wank, and Yazmina moved forward to engage the enemy with Torgun following close behind, both Arwen and Deidre were once again struck by that same strange fogginess of the mind. They remained standing on the stairs with Masawa nudging them worriedly (which had a very unfortunate effect on Deidre's allergies).

The imps, however, reacted immediately to the aggression. A couple bolts of fire fizzled out uselessly on Amel's shield, and a third whizzed by his head and singed a bit of his hair. The left-most imp was easily skewered by the sword and fell dead to the ground with a weak gurgle. Wank's flames were not as effective as usual with the split focus, but the imps were not particularly hearty and their attention had been turned toward Amel: the right-most imp had its face and throat burned badly enough to send it to the ground twitching in shock and unable to breathe, but the one in the middle only took some burns to one arm. As it turned to face the new threat with a hiss, Yazmina raced by and distracted it for one fatal moment as Torgun cleaved it in half from head to crotch with one mighty two-handed swing that also cracked the stone below.

When Yazmina got to within a couple paces of the demon summoner with her shield poised for a bashing, he had just finished another rune on the lord's daughter and suddenly turned to look at her. He stabbed his right hand out toward her, with the bloody metal instrument in his hand, and his guttural words grew faster and sharper. A spectral hand appeared in front of Yazmina, with the palm alone almost matching her height, dark red like old blood but translucent enough to see through, and it reached for her with clenching claws. Her forward rush got her out of the way of the claws themselves, though not before the end of one scraped her arm and burned through a shallow line of her flesh like acid, but the large digits closed around her in a shrinking cage that threatened to close in on her in mere moments. With his left hand, bloody from the cut on his own forearm, he reached out to the side of the makeshift altar opposite Yazmina with a clawing grasp like a mirror of the spectral hand, but something different appeared as his chanting took on a feverish pitch: a dark smear in the air, like soot rubbed onto a clean window, in a roughly oval shape that rose almost nine feet from the floor, and it was quickly coalescing into a humanoid shape. There was no telling how much time it would take for Yazmina to be annihilated or for the demon to be fully pulled into their world, but the adventurers certainly did not have long to act if they wished to prevent either outcome.
 
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