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Beyond the Rerisen Tower(DM Iron Sky, Judge: renau1g)
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<blockquote data-quote="Mewness" data-source="post: 5501478" data-attributes="member: 14889"><p>Scarmiglione asks politely for something hot to drink, and upon being provided with a large cup of tea, drinks it in his birdlike manner, sticking his beak in and then tilting his head sharply back so that the liquid trickles down his throat.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid">“After leaving you at the tower, we traveled into the mountains,”</span> he begins softly, although his voice carries well enough for everyone to hear. <span style="color: DarkOrchid">“We were quickly surrounded by a strange, unnaturally cold mist, and had trouble finding our way. We could hear the dead pursuing us, but we were not able to avoid them.... They came upon us very suddenly, almost out of nowhere: more of those unpleasant flying globules, and creatures that, despite their enormous size, seemed to vanish into the mist without effort. I confess I do not know how we survived—those of us who did. Salgyn and Yishim were struck down and turned into walking dead, like your confederates”</span>—he nods at a militia man—<span style="color: DarkOrchid">“and I was struck down myself. When I came awake again, I saw those little flying things—so many of them! They had drained us all, and their numbers grew and grew—but they were channeling their power, trying to cause one of the large creatures to rise again, and it was somehow beyond them: one by one they faded, spent.”</span> Scarmiglione shakes his head gently, still bemused by the events he is relating. <span style="color: DarkOrchid">“Those of us still standing tried to capture the things that Salgyn and Yishim had become. We could not bring ourselves to destroy them, though more dead were coming, and there was little time. The body of Salgyn escaped us, and we struggled on with Yishim. I could hardly walk. I was sure the end was near—I had a restorative concoction in my bag, but I could not swallow, could not drink it.</span></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid"></span></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid">“You will doubt the next part of the story, perhaps—with good reason, as I doubt it myself. I was, as I say, barely conscious. Kaz said that he could see a golden light, and one way or another, we abandoned our former course and made our way towards it. The path led us through a narrow ravine, and our pursuers were gaining on us, exhausted as we were, and dragging a walking corpse who fought us at every step—in the light of dawn, the picture is an amusing one, no?”</span> Scarmiglione chuckles. <span style="color: DarkOrchid">“I vaguely remember singing the Song for the Dead to him—to it, rather—in an attempt to calm it down. Whether I did or not, whether or not it worked, I cannot precisely recollect. Perhaps I dreamed it. It is a famous aria—you have heard it, not doubt.”</span> And he sings a good part of it, briefly filling the room with the poignant, haunting tune, before breaking the mood with a sudden full-throated laugh at the idea of himself singing to amuse a zombie.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid">“But to continue: the dead were catching up. We passed through an especially narrow bottleneck, and Fredrock declared he would stay and defend it while the rest of us escaped. As to whether any of us tried to dissuade him I cannot say. In any case we left him behind. Then our progress was blocked by a barrier of golden light.”</span> He fishes around in his pockets for the statuette of the goddess. <span style="color: DarkOrchid">“But the barrier seemed to recognize this little bauble I had found, and we were admitted into a sort of grotto, with a glowing golden pool. You will correct me if I am wrong,”</span> he says, turning to his companions, <span style="color: DarkOrchid">“for I do not trust my own recollections. A woman’s voice spoke—I believe it was the little statue speaking. She offered to save Fredrock’s life in exchange for one of our lives. Well, I cannot say what happened, exactly. Somehow Fredrock’s life was saved, and we were all alive ourselves at the end of it. Even Yishim was restored to life. Rather than taking one person’s life, it appears that she took a little something from each of us.”</span> One of his hands goes unconsciously to the golden feathers at his throat and picks at them.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid">“I should like to identify our benefactor, but she would not reveal her name. She mentioned something of history of the area. There was once a city here, inhabited by people she referred to as the Hungerers; thoroughly unpleasant folk apparently, practitioners of necromancy and worshipers of the raven gods—the very ones causing all the trouble here. They had taken over the mind of a powerful sorceress, the very one who had been sending the dead to attack us.</span></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid"></span></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid">“Well. We were much refreshed after spending some time in the golden grotto—it is no exaggeration to say that we had been brought back from the brink of death—and so we continued up to the plateau, where we did indeed find the ruins of a city. I cannot accurately describe it; the entire plateau was shrouded in that same clammy mist.... The dead were there in vast numbers, but we eluded them—by quite a clever bit of deception, really. I was leading some of them off and happened upon an old library, and had the good fortune to see some maps of the place, so getting through the city proved not at all difficult.</span></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid"></span></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid">“Our information suggested that the center of the raven gods’ power was in a vast underground labyrinth. We encountered more dead on our way through. Truly hideous, creatures that it would hardly be decent to describe, not to mention the mushrooms that seemed to move in response to spilled blood—well, it does not bear talking of, does it? One cannot forget such things too quickly. I don’t know how long it took us to get through the labyrinth—it is truly vast, and we saw only a fraction of it—but after many ascents and descents, and what seemed to be an endless series of tunnels, we found the main temple.</span></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid"></span></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid">“This was a large hall, decorated with images of the raven gods, and your friends were there—I mean you and your friend Livia, of course,”</span> he says, glancing at Cale. <span style="color: DarkOrchid">“But they were most hideously changed. And there was a third person, the sorceress, the one who had been tormenting us all along. And she spoke to us, in two voices at once, so it seems to me—one voice the servant of the raven gods, taunting us, and the other the person she had been before, pleading in our minds.... Because of her, we knew how to destroy them—we had to break the statues of the gods and disrupt the magic that would bring them back.</span></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid"></span></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid">“You and Livia”</span>—he again addresses Cale—<span style="color: DarkOrchid">“were controlled by the ravens and fought us. Every time we killed you, the statues brought you back. When the statues were destroyed, you became your human selves again—but you both had the terrible wounds that we had inflicted. Livia was so badly injured that she could not survive the sorceress’s attack.”</span> Scarmiglione drains his cup and pours himself some more. <span style="color: DarkOrchid">“This is marvelous; the very thing,”</span> he comments—rather unfeelingly, given that he is in the middle of relating the circumstances of Livia’s death.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrchid">“All that remained was to disrupt the magic and destroy the sorceress—as she herself had requested. I cannot say it was a simple matter. I don’t know the first thing about magical rituals, and frankly, I should not have supposed that I knew much about killing undead sorceresses, either. Fortunately, there are some among us with expertise in these delicate matters. It is done, and, fortune willing, over with.”</span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mewness, post: 5501478, member: 14889"] Scarmiglione asks politely for something hot to drink, and upon being provided with a large cup of tea, drinks it in his birdlike manner, sticking his beak in and then tilting his head sharply back so that the liquid trickles down his throat. [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]“After leaving you at the tower, we traveled into the mountains,”[/COLOR] he begins softly, although his voice carries well enough for everyone to hear. [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]“We were quickly surrounded by a strange, unnaturally cold mist, and had trouble finding our way. We could hear the dead pursuing us, but we were not able to avoid them.... They came upon us very suddenly, almost out of nowhere: more of those unpleasant flying globules, and creatures that, despite their enormous size, seemed to vanish into the mist without effort. I confess I do not know how we survived—those of us who did. Salgyn and Yishim were struck down and turned into walking dead, like your confederates”[/COLOR]—he nods at a militia man—[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]“and I was struck down myself. When I came awake again, I saw those little flying things—so many of them! They had drained us all, and their numbers grew and grew—but they were channeling their power, trying to cause one of the large creatures to rise again, and it was somehow beyond them: one by one they faded, spent.”[/COLOR] Scarmiglione shakes his head gently, still bemused by the events he is relating. [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]“Those of us still standing tried to capture the things that Salgyn and Yishim had become. We could not bring ourselves to destroy them, though more dead were coming, and there was little time. The body of Salgyn escaped us, and we struggled on with Yishim. I could hardly walk. I was sure the end was near—I had a restorative concoction in my bag, but I could not swallow, could not drink it. “You will doubt the next part of the story, perhaps—with good reason, as I doubt it myself. I was, as I say, barely conscious. Kaz said that he could see a golden light, and one way or another, we abandoned our former course and made our way towards it. The path led us through a narrow ravine, and our pursuers were gaining on us, exhausted as we were, and dragging a walking corpse who fought us at every step—in the light of dawn, the picture is an amusing one, no?”[/COLOR] Scarmiglione chuckles. [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]“I vaguely remember singing the Song for the Dead to him—to it, rather—in an attempt to calm it down. Whether I did or not, whether or not it worked, I cannot precisely recollect. Perhaps I dreamed it. It is a famous aria—you have heard it, not doubt.”[/COLOR] And he sings a good part of it, briefly filling the room with the poignant, haunting tune, before breaking the mood with a sudden full-throated laugh at the idea of himself singing to amuse a zombie. [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]“But to continue: the dead were catching up. We passed through an especially narrow bottleneck, and Fredrock declared he would stay and defend it while the rest of us escaped. As to whether any of us tried to dissuade him I cannot say. In any case we left him behind. Then our progress was blocked by a barrier of golden light.”[/COLOR] He fishes around in his pockets for the statuette of the goddess. [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]“But the barrier seemed to recognize this little bauble I had found, and we were admitted into a sort of grotto, with a glowing golden pool. You will correct me if I am wrong,”[/COLOR] he says, turning to his companions, [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]“for I do not trust my own recollections. A woman’s voice spoke—I believe it was the little statue speaking. She offered to save Fredrock’s life in exchange for one of our lives. Well, I cannot say what happened, exactly. Somehow Fredrock’s life was saved, and we were all alive ourselves at the end of it. Even Yishim was restored to life. Rather than taking one person’s life, it appears that she took a little something from each of us.”[/COLOR] One of his hands goes unconsciously to the golden feathers at his throat and picks at them. [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]“I should like to identify our benefactor, but she would not reveal her name. She mentioned something of history of the area. There was once a city here, inhabited by people she referred to as the Hungerers; thoroughly unpleasant folk apparently, practitioners of necromancy and worshipers of the raven gods—the very ones causing all the trouble here. They had taken over the mind of a powerful sorceress, the very one who had been sending the dead to attack us. “Well. We were much refreshed after spending some time in the golden grotto—it is no exaggeration to say that we had been brought back from the brink of death—and so we continued up to the plateau, where we did indeed find the ruins of a city. I cannot accurately describe it; the entire plateau was shrouded in that same clammy mist.... The dead were there in vast numbers, but we eluded them—by quite a clever bit of deception, really. I was leading some of them off and happened upon an old library, and had the good fortune to see some maps of the place, so getting through the city proved not at all difficult. “Our information suggested that the center of the raven gods’ power was in a vast underground labyrinth. We encountered more dead on our way through. Truly hideous, creatures that it would hardly be decent to describe, not to mention the mushrooms that seemed to move in response to spilled blood—well, it does not bear talking of, does it? One cannot forget such things too quickly. I don’t know how long it took us to get through the labyrinth—it is truly vast, and we saw only a fraction of it—but after many ascents and descents, and what seemed to be an endless series of tunnels, we found the main temple. “This was a large hall, decorated with images of the raven gods, and your friends were there—I mean you and your friend Livia, of course,”[/COLOR] he says, glancing at Cale. [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]“But they were most hideously changed. And there was a third person, the sorceress, the one who had been tormenting us all along. And she spoke to us, in two voices at once, so it seems to me—one voice the servant of the raven gods, taunting us, and the other the person she had been before, pleading in our minds.... Because of her, we knew how to destroy them—we had to break the statues of the gods and disrupt the magic that would bring them back. “You and Livia”[/COLOR]—he again addresses Cale—[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]“were controlled by the ravens and fought us. Every time we killed you, the statues brought you back. When the statues were destroyed, you became your human selves again—but you both had the terrible wounds that we had inflicted. Livia was so badly injured that she could not survive the sorceress’s attack.”[/COLOR] Scarmiglione drains his cup and pours himself some more. [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]“This is marvelous; the very thing,”[/COLOR] he comments—rather unfeelingly, given that he is in the middle of relating the circumstances of Livia’s death. [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]“All that remained was to disrupt the magic and destroy the sorceress—as she herself had requested. I cannot say it was a simple matter. I don’t know the first thing about magical rituals, and frankly, I should not have supposed that I knew much about killing undead sorceresses, either. Fortunately, there are some among us with expertise in these delicate matters. It is done, and, fortune willing, over with.”[/COLOR] [/QUOTE]
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