Soulsearching, rising and falling
A couple notes on this update. 1) Sorry it's a little late, I was super tired last night and went to bed before it was completely finished. My gaming group will now be unhappy with me since I'll be late to the sat game. Werp.
2) This one is sort of a collaboration in parts with Fyrehowl's player who wrote up a nice portion of the material dealing with the lupinal's introspection at the time (I preserved most of in, just edited it for flow and added some material. That part is mostly the last portion of the update).
3) Just to avoid offending anyones' grandmas, I deleted a yugoloth sex scene. It would have passed, marginally, maybe the way I'd written it, but it came off as dry. And honestly, if I'm going to write up two characters f*cking each others brains out, I'm going to write it up properly and not half-a**ed like the scene here that I edited out. There's enough suggestion there though that you'll know where it was going to get stuck. *chuckle*
On with the show...
***
…then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
John Keats, “When I have fears that I may cease to be”
Fyrehowl felt cold, alone and introspective as she and the others stumbled back into Sigil through the gate from Elysium’s gatetown. All thoughts of Rubicon were smeared a crimson red and blurred with tears in her mind as she sat down in the Portal Jammer’s tap room, not honestly remembering much of what had happened after they had arrived in the middle of the devastation that had been wrought upon her people. Elysium had been raped in the cruelest way imaginable, and she felt that violation to her core. That it wasn’t her who had been butchered, crucified or raped and left to die in the ruins of Rubicon as they ripped away a fourth of her home plane… it didn’t matter, she felt it all the same and nothing seemed to help in either the short term, or in any long term solution.
The alcohol that she might have drowned her pain in would have only felt akin to the numbing drain of the plane the fiends had spawned upon, and it didn’t seem to her that the rulers of Elysium had any way of making right what had happened. Where had they been…
The lupinal wept softly by herself as the others consoled themselves in whatever way suited them best. Even Nisha seemed quiet and hurt as she sat next to Tristol and Skalliska. Skalliska was staring curiously at a crystal ball larger than her own head, watching the genocide play out upon the plains of Oinos, and Tristol watched with morbid fascination at the battle.
The Mother of Serpents was missing four of its heads, but it still fought on against the armies of the two fallen Oinoloths who likewise did the same. It seemed unlikely that mercy would be practiced by any side in the conflict.
“I think I can guess who’s going to be the next Oinoloth.” Tristol said fatalistically.
“Taking their sweet time climbing to the top it looks like though. Still, I want to see who arrives at the top eventually because there’s people fighting there already, and they have been since the former Oinoloth died.” Skalliska said as she poked a claw at a section of the battlefield as she panned out on the images unfolding within the scrying orb.
“… died in rather spectacular fashion no less.” Nisha quipped.
Clueless was coping with it all in his own way as he drank down several bottles of hard alcohol, none of which were capable of getting him intoxicated, but if only to give him something to concentrate upon. Florian was alternating between prayer and ale, and as time passed, he was edging closer to Clueless who still seemed largely oblivious.
Toras was busy watching the window out of the bar, watching a steady stream of worried and tense members of the city watch and both the Sons of Mercy and the Sodkillers hurry past in the direction of the Hive.
“Looks like they’re expecting trouble in the Hive from this all…” the half-celestial said as he turned back towards the others.
Already most of their patrons had left and returned to their own homes or places of business as word had spread about the events in Belarian and in the Waste. The multiverse was tensed, coiled tight like a spring, and no one wished to be standing in the way if something were to snap. But if there was to be any sort of response that might spill over to Sigil, Fyrehowl at least knew it wouldn’t be at the hands of her own people…
Toras stepped back as the door swung open and a member of the Sons of Mercy stepped into the bar. Dressed in the white armor and regalia of his faction, the man seemed uncertain but ready for what the next days might bring as he nodded to everyone in the room.
“Can we help you sir?” Tristol said as he looked up from Skalliska’s scrying orb.
The paladin shook his head, then thought better of it and nodded. “I need to ask you all to stay inside and be alert, especially since you’re not all that far away from the Hive.”
“Oh?” Clueless asked from behind the bar.
“We expect trouble and we expect it very soon. The ‘loths… not sure how much you know about it…”
Fyrehowl looked up and snarled violently.
The paladin grimaced and nodded sympathetically, “While I can’t say first hand what happened, I’ve heard the same rumors our faction has been told. Some are saying that a portion of the upper planes was ripped away into Hades. Some are saying that the Oinoloth is dead, and others are saying that the Baatezu were making off with the mortals who had served on either of the sides. That by itself is causing all hell to break loose in Torch, Hopeless and Curst.”
“And they’re all coming here…” Nisha muttered, “…all of greed, gloom, and ‘stab you in the back just because I can’. Lovely people, open the portals right up…”
The paladin ignored the mildly tipsy tiefling, “What’s got them terrified are the rumors that whoever came out on top in Oinos is slaughtering anyone who had been loyal to the former Oinoloth or Anthraxus. There was a riot in Hopeless when someone claimed that a death squad had marched out of the palace of Thingol the Mocking… I don’t know what’s true or what’s not, but we may have every lower planar portal jammed with people trying to get into Sigil.”
Toras nodded.
“After all, no army is going to march in after them, that’s for sure, and they’re afraid that the purges are going to follow them anywhere else they might go. But in any event, just be alert if we end up with a riot in the next ward over, and it seems likely that we will.” The paladin said as he made for the door.
“If you or anyone working with you needs a place to just sit down for a minute, something to drink or what have you, you’re more than welcome to drop in here.” Florian said.
Tristol and Clueless both nodded before the half-fey commented, “I don’t think we’ll be going to sleep anytime soon, and we’ll be open as long as we’re awake. And in this climate, considering what happened, we’ll be here a while.”
“Thank you, it’s appreciated. And I’ll keep the offer in mind. Take care.” And with that, the white-garbed paladin was out the door and down the street.
“It’s going to be a long night everyone, that’s for sure.” Clueless said as he started to pull out extra glasses and ale mugs for the people that might filter in over the rest of the evening and next day.
Fyrehowl looked up sullenly and spoke for the first time in a while, “A long night… that fits well…”
***
Indeed it was a very long night, and the Portal Jammer ended up attracting a rather eclectic crowd of local businessmen, city guard and faction members, and a number of refugees who had managed to get into the city through some of the less regulated portals. Many of those in the inn had never been there before, and despite the horror that had spawned it all, they were getting exposure for the bar that they hadn’t had as much of before.
Florian and Toras took shifts serving as bouncer at the door of the inn as sporadic violence in the streets bled over from the poorer sections of the Hive where refugees had been flooding into the city from the lower planar gates. Toras took no small measure of relief in personally
handling any such violence in the immediate vicinity of the Portal Jammer.
“Funny about those random head wounds ‘aint it?” Nisha said as she looked past Toras to the tiefling who was sprawled in the street behind the fighter as he walked back into the inn. The man had threatened to burn down the inn if they hadn’t given him free alcohol, and the man was now lying in the street, bleeding, and possibly comatose.
“I didn’t mean to break anything on him! I meant to subdue!” Toras said as Nisha shot him another disbelieving look that was bordering on laughter, if only to break the otherwise oppressive atmosphere in the jammer.
The atmosphere took a dip downwards when a haggard looking swordsman walked into the inn, injured with half healed wounds, and looking petrified with fear. His torn and scorched tabard bore the symbol of Anthraxus: one of the mortal mercenaries who had served for gold under the now dead archfiend.
Toras looked at him warily as the man shuffled in and sat down without a word. Far from being liable to start any trouble, then man had literally been to hell and back, and just needed somewhere to recover if he could. “May I have something to drink?” He asked, his stare slightly glazed over and his voice choking and cracking as he spoke.
Clueless looked at him and then at the others, the berk was alive but not intact. “Anything specific? It’s on the house.”
Dmitri Theodorikos looked up at the half-fey and managed a smile, “Just anything, I need to forget something things for a bit.”
Tristol paused from watching the kobold’s scrying orb and sat down next to the man. “What happened out there?”
The mercenary answered with a broken laugh. “My brother and I, we joined up in Center, hoping to make some easy gold. The pay was good and we didn’t think that the former Oinoloth was going to lose. He’s dead now, and so is the other one.”
“Did your brother make it out too?” Florian asked.
“No…” Dmitri whispered softly, “And I almost didn’t either. As soon as the fighting broke out, there was a Baatezu army that altered course and crashed into our flank. That was when the sky began to boil and…”
He shuddered and paused to take a drink. Clueless refilled it almost immediately with better wine. Dmitri continued then, “Another army, easily comparable to either of the others, simply appeared with a great serpent, or dragon or something at its head, I thought it might have been Nidhogg but it wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t.” Toras said as he glanced out of the window as a group of Xaositects rushed past carrying burning torches and water brigade buckets both.
“I don’t know how I survived the fighting after that, but my brother and I got separated and it all went downhill from there. The newcomers and their army were winning. Sure their losses were horrific, but whoever their leader was I don’t think he cared, they were just property… same as all of the mortals there in the battlefield were.”
“The Baatezu.” Clueless said.
“Yeah, that seems to have been their price in all of it, us. The ‘loths don’t use petitioners in the same way the devils do at all, and so they sold us all before the battle even started. Traitors or agents within the first two armies started grabbing us and herding us together for the baatezu to collect as their prize once it was clear that their allies were winning.”
“B*stards…” Florian cursed.
“And as soon as they could they fled the field of battle, dragging off the mortals back to the Nine Hells. I only hope my brother wasn’t with them. It would be better even if he’d died earlier on in the battle, at least then he’d have a chance of arriving in his patron’s realm.” Dmitri sighed and polished off his drink, not knowing that his brother was dead in a rather permanent fashion. The exact fate of his brother’s soul however was an open and uncertain thing.
Florian looked at the others, “His tab is on me till he’s feeling better and recovered. Make him comfortable, it’s the least we can do.”
Dmitri smiled and wiped away his tears, “Thank you. Bless you all.”
Feeling pleased that they could at least make the mercenary temporarily happy and removed from what he had been through, they continued as they had been throughout the evening already and then continuing on through the early morning.
Skalliska continued observing the events unfolding on the Waste along with several of the patrons. As the battle and its aftermath progressed, they watched as bodies were hurled from the spires and ramparts of the Wasting Tower. Lesser yugoloths were simply hurled into the open air to be crushed by their impact, though some of them never hit bottom, as the Mother of Serpents would pluck them out of the air and devour them whole with one or more of its still intact heads. The rest of the great beast was curled about the base of the tower like a pet, and its other crippled or mangled heads lay on the ground oozing blood like slow rivers as they ever so slowly regenerated.
They saw no Greater Yugoloths hurled from the heights of the Wasting Tower though; their fate was perhaps worse and much more symbolic. As the purge progressed towards to the top of the tower, greater ‘loths were hung from the spires and crags, or their heads strung like beads on a string from the ramparts. All said, the dying or dead and butchered ‘loths seemed to swing and dangle like leaves on a withered tree too long denied water and light.
Hours passed and higher still it went till the upper portions of the symbol of Yugoloth dominion over the Waste was hung, decorated and festooned with the swinging bodies of hung and disemboweled Ultroloths. And then finally, several figures emerged onto the top of the tower to stand before the throne, the Seige Malicious, and a group of perhaps twelve Ultroloths, one of them who had already claimed it, its title, and its granted power.
Four figures in total stepped out towards the others clustered around the throne, though others comprising all types of greater ‘loths stood back and watched, mostly Ultroloths and Arcanaloths loyal to the four. A chocolate brown male arcanaloth dressed in red and gold, a tan female dressed in little but the blood-soaked remnants of rich blue silk wrappings though she herself seemed unsullied by the gore, another female of rich copper color and dressed in green who seemed to lurk in the background and avoid direct sight from any watching, and The Ebon.
Vorkannis the Ebon, overlord of Carceri, was a billowing black swirl of shadows that wrapped around his own blue robed body with only his piercing reddish-pink eyes and his fangs giving contrast from the gloom that cloaked him. In fact his body itself seemed darker than the rippling currents of shadow that wafted off of his body as he stepped apart from his companions, the Wheels Within Wheels, and approached the newest ruler of Khin-Oin.
The slaughter was quick and brutal, with none of them being offered the chance to swear loyalty to the new order that had risen up against them. In under a minute the Ebon’s two primary conspirators sat upon the corpses and healed what wounds they had, though they were precious few, and the Ebon’s consort fawned upon him as she lay at his feet. Vorkannis himself was holding the head of the Ultroloth who would be Oinoloth, ripping it free from the doomed fiend and speaking to it while it somehow remained alive till he was finished. Upon finishing, he turned and sat upon the throne, letting the blood and spinal fluid of the former occupant drip upon his waiting tongue before he crushed the skull and hurled it over the edge. Khin-Oin had a new master and the Yugoloths of the Waste bowed to a new Oinoloth.
“Well f*ck…” Florian said, breaking what had been total and unbelieving silence throughout the inn’s taproom.
Clueless said nothing, but instead looked down at his own leg and the gem that was embedded into his ankle, the gem that had been placed there by the fiend he had just watched usurp the leadership of his entire race. The antimagic bubble around his ankle was still there, but he wouldn’t have a supply of them forever, and was at the mercy of another ‘loth to have them in the first place. No, he’d have to deal with it sooner rather than later.
****
The Ebon smirked knowingly and smugly as he sat upon the great throne and felt the nearly sentient essence of the siege malicious reach out and touch his mind to determine his worth to sit and rule. Seeming to grow from the top of the spinal column shaped tower, it resembled more living bone than the rock of the tower itself, and it felt powerful, willful and alive as it latched onto the spirit of the one who had slain its three previous occupants.
Like a lover’s caress it brushed across the Ebon’s thoughts and then paused as it tested the black and lightless waters of his mind, feeling the currents of the sharks swimming within those midnight depths. The tower was pleased with what it saw, overwhelmed and honored even, as it whispered to him, “Hello my lord. Hello my Oinoloth of the Waste. I give you this title and this power, as is my purpose. Be proud.”
Mentally turning inward, Vorkannis reached out his own mind to that of the Tower and gave it his reply, “Hello stepping stone.”
Kneeling before him, her hands on his robes, his consort smiled up at him. “It has accepted you my Love, and I am proud of you, though this was to be expected.” The Ebon stroked her ears as she lowered her head and occupied herself with showing her own approval.
Without a pause, the new Oinoloth looked up at his two conspirators who stood over the bodies of the Ultroloths. “And now I believe that your loyalty is to be rewarded. At the start of this I asked you each a question, and you have earned what you asked me for.”
Helekanalaith and Shemeska nodded to the Ebon as they sat upon the bodies of the dead that littered the courtyard atop the tower. Both of them paused however as they realized something that struck their minds as anomalous: The Ebon had not changed in the slightest upon assuming the throne and being accepted by it as Oinoloth. There was no physical alteration, no warping of the body, no corruption of form as the Siege did to all who took its mantle for their own. Nothing had happened to their lord except for a minor change that they sensed was entirely of his own doing.
The Ebon had always been surrounded by an aura of shadow that manifested as trails of darkness, black wispy tendrils that seemed to swirl about his form and evaporate from him in ephemeral traces on the air. It was still there, all of it, lapping up from his body as he settled onto the throne of Khin-Oin and his consort indulged in the carnal. But where before the trails of shadow were thin tendrils of darkness, they had taken upon themselves an additional aspect: they trailed off on the thin air like an artist’s impression of disease, like the shadowy images of plague spores and airborne corruption drifting off and emanating from the Lord of Khin-Oin. His conspirators sensed that it was at his whim though, and not a forced change according to his position as the title had always enforced, and they were inwardly uncertain as to what it meant.
But none of that mattered as they pictured in their mind’s their rewards for their part in his ascension. Both of them had pictured cleanly in their minds what it was they had requested in exchange for their aid to the Ebon; Helekanalaith had asked for something simple: respect due his position, and importance. The Marauder had likewise asked for something of few words: independence, respect, and sole dominion over the informal Yugoloth hierarchy within Sigil.
“Your newfound respect and importance doesn’t extend to your children Hele…” The Marauder said with a smirk after they both had reiterated their answers to Vorkannis. “Sigil only has enough room for one king, and you’re looking at her. Your son can play handmaiden or squire, something like that.”
“Not unexpected considering how much you actually despise him. Though I’ve no doubt that you’ll continue f*cking each other despite the mutual opinions.” Helekanalaith said disdainfully.
The Marauder laughed as she adjusted the razorvine circlet atop her head and ignored the mental snarl from the Ebon’s consort at the open discussion of her love life. “No, we never have. Except for that one time. And all those other times too, but maybe I’m just lying, or maybe he is. Would that I was. Which would make you more comfortable? We can call that the truth.”
“Would that you were.” The Keeper said with a shrug. “No complaint from me, since you’ve earned your prize and he hasn’t. He will still of course serve as my envoy in matters within the city. And I expect then that since I’ve lost my mortal tool in our mutual information hunt, I would expect you to lose yours as well. In fact, I’m adding that to me request…”
The Marauder narrowed her eyes briefly but then shrugged and laughed as she passed it off, while all the while the Keeper was passive but inwardly laughing at her. She was good, very good, but she wasn’t as old as he was, nor had she the years of experience in a position of power such as he did. He smiled and adjusted his spectacles.
Shemeska looked back up at the Oinoloth and explicitly ignored his consort as if she didn’t exist except to waste air. “My lord, before I do as the Keeper would request, is there anything further you would ask of me? I would have one last use for him before he’s let loose, one person to see killed in Sigil.”
The Oinoloth raised an eyebrow and smirked as he plucked the thoughts from her mind and replied likewise, “Yes you could, but you have others who could do the deed just as well. Kill the executioner as you like and make a public statement with it just to leave the lingering impression that we can reach inside the city at our whim. We could, but the Wheel Within Wheels are served better by the impression and fear of such, rather than the unwanted attention that we three would receive by doing so.”
The Marauder nodded and adjusted the circlet of razorvine atop her head, playing with one of the razor sharp leaves with a single painted, poisoned claw. “I know just the way, and I’ll enjoy this one personally I think.”
Helekanalaith smiled back at the Marauder’s leering, smug, sh*t eating grin as she laughed and wrapped a finger fully in the living razorvine. Bloody but satisfying, he wouldn’t doubt that, and Sigil had enough of the floral vermin to go around on almost any street corner, or at least it did the last time he had been inside Sigil nearly a hundred thousand years prior.
“And by the time you are done with that, my own mortal tool will be at your doorstep to collect what you still have, and then I’ll proceed to break him. Assuming all goes well in Ysgard, Oakwright will be dead and your former toy will have a present waiting for him. You’ll see.”
Helekanalaith and Shemeska both nodded and began to talk amongst themselves as they gathered the bodies of the dead Ultroloths and began to personally sever the heads and suspend them over the lip of the Wasting Tower’s summit.
All the while The Ebon simply watched in idle amusement at their banter as they hurled the tethered heads from the precipice to dangle like obscene ornaments from the tower. As they worked his mind was largely occupied and speaking to the Wasting Tower itself, familiarizing himself with its more subtle powers, while his body was firmly in the caress of his consort.
The process went on for an hour or more before he silenced the tower and recalled his awareness back to the present; he had other things to do and the Wasting Tower could wait. Besides, there was little there he wouldn’t have been able to do already, it simply made it less taxing to control certain affects and properties of the plane it was tethered to. In some way that plane was more linked to him than it might have been to Khin-Oin, but power in its own right was worthless without the ability to use it, direct it, and exploit it for your own benefit. Purity, reorganization, a rebirth of focus, and revenge… all of these were worthy goals to exploit that power towards, though perhaps just a part of a larger picture by the end of it all.
Opening his eyes and fully snapping back to the present, Vorkannis smiled down at his lover. He reached down to touch Shylara’s chin and gesture her to stand. She rose and stood before him, only briefly glancing back at the Marauder and licking the side of her mouth clean. “Yes my Oinoloth?”
“I asked these two a question some time ago, but I have never asked the same of you. Tell me, what is it you want. Answer me your desire and I will reward you with it.”
She looked into his eyes and answered without hesitation, “I desire y…”
He stopped her, “That is implicit and understood. Besides that.”
She nodded and stepped forward to sit upon his lap and wrap her arms about his neck. Shylara leaned forward as the illusions and other magics cloaking her true physical appearance dropped and vanished. Gone was the pristine and immaculately groomed fiend, and in its place was a tattered and manged figure who bled and oozed from the open sores that dotted her flesh where she had scratched herself raw from itching. Gone was the arcanaloth draped in rich clothing of silk, velvet and leather, and except for a few bits of jewelry she sat naked and bloody upon the Oinoloth’s lap. Leaning into her embrace of the Ebon, she felt not an ounce of self-consciousness at her appearance, and she gave her answer to his ear with a whisper and a lick.
“Power my love. I want power, responsibility, ascension, prestige and power. Let me stand at your side for what may come and empower me to do so more than I am now.”
He answered her with a lingering kiss as they sat together upon the ancient symbol of power that was the Seige Malicious. Minutes later he broke the embrace and answered his breathless consort, “And that you will have.”
She was unchanged seemingly, and then she felt it within her, at first just a subtle alteration within thought processes and then understanding flooded into her mind, seeming that her veins might ignite with what she had been granted. Outwardly though she was still the arcanaloth who sat upon his lap, naked and tattered, except where her eyes had always been a shade of lavender, they now danced with a of shifting staccato swirl of colors: violet to blue to green to orange to crimson to scarlet and back to violet… the hallmark of an Ultroloth.
The Manged was weeping softly as she looked at her lover and her mind swirled with those she would have revenge upon with the power she felt swirling inside her mind, unlocking and unfolding mystery upon mystery with every eat of her blackened heart. The acid dripping from her eyes steaming and evaporated on the air and The Ebon’s tongue as he licked her cheek.
“Power and ascension you have, prestige as my whore, and now something additional for the rest of your desires. I find myself with a new tower beneath me here, and an old one in Carceri that requires a lord and warden, a mistress to reign over it and all that it holds and represents…”
She swallowed hard as she realized the implications of the gift and position she was being handed. “And the responsibility. What is it that you would have me do in my place as Mistress of the Tower of Incarnate Pain? Say it and it is done my love.”
The Ebon’s eyes flickered crimson as he smiled up at her and held her closer. The air crystallized around them and outside of that bubble, Oinos was still and silent, time itself paused and waiting for them. “That is your position which I abdicate and give to you. And now I have something for you to do with that newfound power and position, something I need you to gather for me.”
***
And so Fyrehowl sat, numb and cold, dead to the world as she looked back to that moment and tried to remember. She honestly didn’t remember leaving the Portal Jammer or walking into the other bar where she found herself sitting with half a mug of bitter, watered down ale. The broken fortress, the screams of the dying, the walls glowing red with the blood of the crucified in the light of dawn… she shook with a mixture of fury and misery and broke off the recollection on those details. It would take time before she could picture it, and already what exactly had happened and what she had seen there retreated into the corners of her mind, balled up and willingly, thankfully forgotten in a haze of regret.
Instead, her mind locked onto the aftermath as she and her companions had left, unable to do anything, and with only a single question rolling about her mind: why? Sigil seemed to drift away as she pondered over things in her mind and felt something change in her as she asked questions she might not have considered just days before.
Why? That same thought had seemed to come to her in an instant as she had fallen to her knees there at Rubicon with the waters of Oceanus running red with the blood of her kind, and even possibly her kin. She had simply stared, shivering from the cold numbness that seemed to enclose everything. Too disbelieving to even protest her disbelief... It seemed to take both an eternity and an instant to pull away from that battlefield of horror and the question was locked into her mind, rising above even her own horror and fear.
”Of all the things to happen, why this? To be so shortsighted, to do what I *thought* was right and good to pave the way for even more betrayals and horrors. How could the guardinals, my own people, have been so ... righteous that we…they… brought their own downfall?
Where were the greater powers of good when all of Belarian needed them most? Where were they when armies of fiends poured into Elysium? Not even the other layers of Elysium had seen it come or happen. Talisad, Lucan, Windheir, the others… where had they been? This is...this is not how it is supposed to be!
They have been so blind, I... I have been so unfathomably blind.”
***
When they had emerged out of the glimmer of Tristol’s planeshift and onto the cobblestones of Tradegate’s streets it had been later in the evening. The sky was clear and still as the lights of the city stretched off and faded into the distance above, the dark of the Outland’s sky snuffing the lights of the city as well as the spire snuffed magic. Fyrehowl had wandered off on her own, needing the time to simply walk and brood, and telling the others that she would meet them later.
Unaware and unconcerned, a bat-winged tiefling scampered along the streets, between the noisy bars and the shops that were still open. Running from the other card players who just realized they’d been cheated, he quickly cornered into an alley and doubled back on the next street near the outskirts of the city. He took little notice as he ran past a blue and cream furred lupinal, staring up at the sky, apparently talking to thin air.
Fyrehowl stood there, looking at the stars above, the fur on her cheeks matted from her tears. She spoke softly, "I know you cant hear me, but I'm sorry. I know you had faith in me, and I… I failed. Again. I wish I could see the world like you did - have faith like you did in the things we were taught but...I can't…"
She would have said more, but the words stuck, her voice trailing off to nothing more than a whisper. It seemed as if all that was supposed to be good and right in the planes didn't matter. No one would come to help you, no one would guide you, and no one would save you.
As hard as it had always been to believe that Elysium would always seem to take what the Lower Planes wanted to do with the rest of the multiverse, now it had taken this with its only reply being a whimper of its own agony as it curled away and whimpered for the pain to end.
The winner was painfully obvious. Were the powers of good so content to let the fiends run everything and mow down anything in their way? Apparently so.
What was so wonderful about all the morals, all the hope, the genuine faith in right and mercy if it came with a passiveness that rendered you useless? It wasn't like the guardinals did much these days that she saw other than the unending but largely petty interference in the Blood War. Fighting evil for the sake of fighting evil was right and proper, but all that they did was meaningless in the overall scope and scale of the War Eternal. It all went on without accomplishment, other than a stalemate that seemed acceptable to them, and at a price she'd seen paid before her eyes over, and over, and over again. Belarian was neither the first, nor the last innocent blood to be spilled because of their quiescence, all born of high-minded righteousness and a fear of drawing attention to the upper planes as a threat to the fiends.
Damn the limits! Damn what they wouldn’t do. It didn’t matter when it came down to stopping bastards from the Pit like the Ebon. If it was a crime to defend yourself and your home by any way possible without betraying it, then so be it. So what if it came at a price of things that you'd rather not do, that you didn’t think were right. Watching your friends, the people you cared for, watching them die over and over again couldn't be any more right.
Thirteen hundred years and she’d yet to find the meaning or understand the way other guardinals seemed to accept their view and their world. She was starting to agree that their view was foolish… Tarnsilver may have been a traitorous, arrogant fool, but he was, in some small way, right about what Elysium had done.
But she… she would not be a traitor in the mold of that one. No, Tarnsilver rightfully lost his life for what he did to Elysium. And in the future, be it a day, a decade, or millennia, the Ebon would be worse off than to lose his head for what he had done.
As much as she thought the blame was hers for Rubicon, she knew it was shared; oh, was it shared. It was shared among many, and the only one who seemed to be on top of that mountain of blame was the midnight black arcanaloth of nightmares. And, while what had been done could never be undone or erased, as much as Elysium would try to eventually bury it, as it had buried all it's other secrets, perhaps it would in some slight way compensate for what her own failure had caused. Nothing seemed to really make sense now, but that, at least, was a goal to hold onto.
She looked up from her mug, shoving what was left along with a bit of coin across the bar, having sat for too long absorbed in her thoughts and needing to be back to her companions. It was well past antipeak, far too late to be up, and on the other side of Sigil no less, but as she walked home, if she could have thought of a deity who might have granted her wish, she’d have prayed not to dream the dreams she knew would come…
Now I understand why Clueless mentioned the PCs' party had yet to take out your namesake or the others. Here's hoping Clueless manages to remove that damn gem before it does more damage, and that someday Fyrehowl can avenge herself on The Ebon.
