Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 359
Shadow of Ell
As the ramifications of Previa’s warning sink in, the entirety of the demiplane warbles, shifts and becomes less solid, sending the Sisters of Ell into a momentary panic. But Morningstar recognizes this for what it is; a vision, a memory, projected from Octesian’s mind into his corrupted slice of Ava Dormo.
In this memory they are all traveling through the Dreamscape, and are very far afield. They are approaching Ava Dormo’s ragged borders, its misty, unknown edge. In front of them, still miles away, is… madness, a place of terrible insanity, whose ripples of psychic horror are just starting to impinge on their minds.
Octesian is headed there, apprehensively, gleefully, on a mission of supreme import.
Grey Wolf swallows his fear and moves in toward Octesian’s towering, tentacular form, knowing he mustn’t attack. His goal is merely to serve as a distraction. Flicker does likewise, but is knocked aside by a tentacle for his troubles.
In a gurgling, raspy voice, barely human, Octesian croaks “Morningstar…” and brings down his sword. It becomes a tentacle as it strikes, bringing crushing pain and waves of nausea. Worse, Morningstar can feel the Octesian’s weapon trying to tear away pieces of her psyche. This she barely resists, and she blinks back tears. Around her, her sisters come running, intent on protecting their leader at any cost. Previa, Sable and Raven are swatted with tentacles as they approach, but are not deterred from trying to distract and interfere with Morningstar’s great enemy.
“Why…? gurgles Octesian. “Why do you surround yourself with… dreaming insects? Excuse while I… swat them!”
“They have a right to resist you!” Morningstar retorts.
Tentacles burst out from new holes and creases in Octesian’s armor, a dozen or more of them, longer and with more suckers, and many of these quickly wrap around Morningstar’s allies. Previa, Aravis, Scola, Sable, Belle and Molly are all hoisted into the air, where they flail helplessly at the ends of Octesian’s pseudopodia. All of these victims are heavily damaged as well, squeezed mercilessly in the tentacles’ grasp, and drained of wisdom by their touch.
Octesian looks down upon Morningstar and laughs. “You’re all just so small,” he croaks. “Look at you!”
“We’ve fought turtles larger than you!” says Morningstar, undaunted. She quickens a divine power and swings Ell’s Will with all of her might. The holy weapon is blacker even than Octesian’s sword, and it shears away her enemy’s red armor, gouging out huge rents in the plates. Where Octesian’s flesh is exposed, there are nothing but thick clustered cables of writhing tentacles, and these boil out of every wound like maddened snakes.
“There’s not much of you left in there,” Morningstar observes.
“It’s all me!” Octesian gurgles. “All that’s left. And it is enough!” Morningstar can see that new tenatcles are sliding into place to support Octesian’s weight, where she had torn open his leg.
Aravis quickens a teleport and easily escapes Octesian’s suckered grip. He appears some distance away, but not too far to cast energy drain. This deals no damage to the villain, but the black energy plays over Octesian’s entire body, even to the tips of his tentacles, all of which shudder and droop slightly. A howl of pain and dismay comes from beneath his helmet.
Snokas moves up to stand next to Morningstar; once he served as her Devoted Defender, and now he is prepared to do so again. Fautish moves up as well to protect her, while Evenstar and Dranko casts healing spells upon her. Ernie then targets Morningstar with righteous wrath of the faithful, making her martial prowess all the more formidable.
The vision around them changes.
Octesian has come to the uneven border where dream and madness blend into one another. He is peering into a writhing gloom, and from that shadowy miasma comes a distant call. Octesian cannot make out the details of that cry, but he is drawn to it like a moth to a fire. Every sane part of his mind tells him to go back, but his body does not obey his sanity, and he crosses the border.
“So,” says Morningstar. “You weren’t strong enough to stop yourself.”
“I was strong enough to continue!” Octesian retorts. “You misunderstand my strength of will. I fought back my own sanity, to do what I had to do. I stayed true to the end.”
He angles his head down to look at Morningstar directly; a dull purple light gleams from somewhere within his helm.
“Speaking of the end… say goodbye to your friends.”
Octesian bends his tentacles, and touches four of his entangled victims to his deadly red armor. The bodies of Sable, Molly and Belle are immediately blackened, their burnt corpses crumbling into lumps of congealed ash and melted bone. Previa screams as her flesh touches the armor, but though she is horribly burned and loses consciousness, she remains barely, barely alive, still gripped in a tentacle.
As the bodies of his victims fall away, some of the gray miasma of the energy drain grows weaker, and Octesian’s wounds grow lessened.
“Delightful,” he groans.
Kibi saps away some of his regained vigor with a ray of enfeeblement; Octesian turns briefly to regard him. “I’ll get to you eventually,” he groans. Scola, wrapped in a tentacle but not touched to the red armor, feels the strength of her bonds grow less and renews her struggles to escape. She fails, and screams in frustration. Corinne rushes in to Morningstar’s side but is plucked up by a tentacle for her trouble and held high above Octesian’s head. Morningstar barks a warning to her remaining sisters to hang back rather than move forward to be grabbed, though Grey Wolf and Flicker still move up to help shield Morningstar from attack. Grey Wolf also casts mountain stance on her, which will make it more difficult for Octesian to lift her up.
But Octesian is not interested in grappling Morningstar. He raises his black tentacle sword – and for a moment it is drawn, clearly against its wielder’s will, towards Dranko. With a strangled grunt Octesian regains control of his weapon, and slashes at Morningstar. His first blow goes wide, as there are so many of her allies surrounding her and getting in the way that his concentration is spoiled. His second strike is better aimed, but Snokas jumps into its path at the last minute and absorbs a crushing blow from the sword. But having knocked Snokas out of the way, and finally clearing away the annoying rabble at his feet with a myriad of tentacles, he lines up a perfect blow on his true enemy. At his sword strikes, it turns fully into a thick, powerful tentacle and wraps around Morningstar’s midsection. She can feel her armor buckle and bones crack in its crushing grip. Then the tentacle unwinds and hovers menacingly over her.
“Soon!” cries Octesian.
Starbrook runs in, hoping to lay hands upon Previa, but at the last moment Octesian lifts the unconscious sister high out of reach. Octesian laughs, a hideous, choking sound. Then he plucks Snokas from the ground with a tentacle wrapped around his arms and body. “Don’t stand between me and my prey, you imbecile!” he croaks. More tenatcles descend, and soon Fautish, Starbrook, Grey Wolf and Raven are also wrapped up and bound, little bundles waving high above Octesian’s head. All take severe damage and are drained of wisdom.
“Soon I will have killed them all, Morningstar!” Octesian bellows. “Soon you will be alone!”
Morningstar’s wrath surrounds her like a dark aura and flows into Ell’s Will. Her holy weapon strikes once, twice, thrice, each time knocking away chunks of armor and tentacle-flesh like it's paper mache. Her last strike takes off the bottom of Octesian’s helmet, and where his chin should be a cluster of tentacles comes spilling out like an obscene beard. Dark ichor wells up from Octesian’s many wounds, and his body slumps in odd ways, shored up by the quickly shifting tentacles that seem to make up his entire physical being. He shouts angry words, but Morningstar has destroyed his mouth and only garbled nonsense comes out.
Aravis has been watching Octesian’s tentacle-bound victims, noting the patterns in which they sway high above them. With his superhuman intellect and unflappable concentration, he thinks he’ll have a moment in which he can save two of them. He just has to wait until they’re…
His moment comes. He quickens a teleport and appears in the air, in the middle of the thick forest of Octesian’s waving pseudopods. In the split second he starts to fall, he comes into contact with Snokas’s shoulder and Fautish’s foot. He dimension doors away, taking both of them with him, and before anyone can full register what a crazy stunt it was, Aravis is standing back on the ground twenty feet back, Fautish and Snokas beside him.
“Go get him,” says Aravis to Snokas, and Morningstar’s defender rushes back to her side, enduring the slap of a tentacle as he approaches. Fautish is close on his heels; when she reaches Morningstar she lays on hands, emptying her reservoir of holy power into her leader. Dranko adds another healing spell of his own.
Ernie decides to risk trying withering palm on Octesian, even though it will involve touching the red armor. He ends up getting by far the worst of the exchange, as Octesian’s spell resistance thwarts the magic, but Ernie is still badly burned by his contact with the armor. His hand smokes and terrible burns race up his arm. When he pulls away, large patches of his skin are left stuck to Octesian’s plates, sizzling. Feeling dizzy, Ernie activates the final scroll of heal in his quickscroll tube and heals his own wounds.
Once more, the vision all around them changes. Now Octesian has moved beyond the border of the Dreamscape and plunged into a place of boiling lunacy. His sanity is burning off like velvet dipped in acid, but he perseveres, and has come at last to a Prison, a Prison entirely of madness made manifest. There are no bars, no physical walls, but the Prison is nonetheless more impenetrable than steel. There is something trapped in the Prison, but Octesian cannot look upon it, and just attempting to see the Prisoner rips away the last of Octesian’s tattered sanity. Whatever is there, unimaginably powerful, overwhelmingly evil, cannot be seen by mortal eyes. All of the heroes experiencing this vision instinctively turn their heads from the Prisoner. They have no choice.
Except for Dranko.
Dranko looks steadily into the Prison, and deep inside there is an indistinct humanoid figure, a being of divine stature whose nature is changing but has not yet changed, and who fights to retain His sense of identity. Dranko knows that even glimpsing the wavering silhouette of the Adversary should be scouring his mind of reason, but it does not. Instead, Dranko is able to retain his focus for several seconds, and during that time gains a terrifying insight into the Adversary’s mind. For behind the madness and frustration of imprisonment, the Adversary is radiating the calm satisfaction of someone who knows He is playing a long game, a game which He has already won.
Octesian screams again, face erupting in fresh tentacles, and Dranko mutters to himself, “Delioch, I love You, but if You are ever trapped in the plane of madness, You’re on Your own.”
Once more, Octesian brings some of his bound victims down to touch his armor. Corinne and Raven are blown to charred dust. Previa, Morningstar’s oldest and truest ally, and who never regained consciousness after her first contact with the armor, is incinerated so thoroughly that even her ashes flash to steam. Scola, still “living” on borrowed time thanks to a revenance spell, cries out in pain but endures the red metal’s burning touch.
“So… few remaining to you,” says Octesian, his voice only barely comprehensible through the flapping tentacles that compose his mouth. “If you all… leave now… you’ll spare those who are left.”
Morningstar shakes her head. “What was it you said? ‘Tonight, Morningstar, tomorrow everyone else?’ If you’re hoping we’ll flee, you’ve already blown that chance.”
Kibi has been keeping a final wish in reserve, in case anything happens to Morningstar, but realizing the terrible casualties Octesian is inflicting, decides to spend his most powerful spell.
“I wish that all those tentacles just go limp, unable to move, or grab anyone, or do any bad thing to my friends!”
A ripple of power blasts outward from the dwarf, rocking the tentacle trees and sending a shudder through Octesian. All at once his many tenatcles flop to the ground, including those still clutching Grey Wolf and Scola.
“Don’t feel bad,” says Dranko. “That happens to everyone sometimes.”
Gyre runs up and frees Scola from her tentacle, dragging her ally away. Grey Wolf unwraps himself as he stands, throwing off what has become a wet, slimy rope.
Octesian jerks his shoulders, but none of his deadly tentacles do anything more than twitch.
“What happened?” he gasps.
“I have friends,” says Morningstar, looking up at him with a grim smile.
“I had friends, too, when I was sane,” Octesian bubbles. “I don’t… remember them.” Filled with fury, Octesian gathers his remaining strength for a death blow. His sword comes down like a demon’s hammer, and his malign will surges forth as he swings, transfixing Morningstar in preparation for this final mortal strike. As it approaches, the black blade uncoils into a thick tentacle, hideously strong. Morningstar knows she is going to die.
Then Snokas is standing in her place. He has shoved her out of the way at the last second, and Octesian’s tentacle-sword wraps around him instead of her. It squeezes like an iron snake, and there is a sickening wet crunch. Blood bursts from his nose, his mouth, his eyes. The tentacle unwraps, dumping Snokas’s lifeless body to the rubbery ground.
Morningstar stares, a cold rage filling her. She hears Ernie’s voice sounding as if from far away. “I can revivify him! Morningstar, finish that monster once and for all.”
With a terrible cry, Morningstar swings Ell’s Will with a breathtaking fury. Her first blow takes a chunk from his chest. Her second removes his right leg at the thigh, and his body slumps as tentacles squirm from his wounds like a frenzy of squid. He prevents himself from falling prone by planting his hand on the ground, but this brings his head down to the same level as Morningstar’s.
Her final swing removes Octesian’s head from his shoulders, and his entire body collapses in a mass of writhing tentacles, rasping and squirming impotently.
And then several things happen in quick succession.
Black wings, like those of an avenging angel, burst from Morningstar’s back. Her entire body grows taller, and a halo appears above her head like a ring of churning smoke. Her left eye hardens to a glittering black, while her right eye blazes with fierce light. And in her mouth, though it’s a small, subtle change, her teeth grow ever-so-longer and ever-so-sharper.
While Morningstar’s friends gape as this transformation, the entire demiplane also undergoes a rapid change. The tentacle trees shake and fade and lose their substance, and somehow they are gone, and the rubbery ground is gone as well, replaced by springy turf. A fresh wind blows through, clearing the air of Octesian’s stench, and high above a pale moon shines out in a clear sky filled with pinprick stars.
A half dozen robed figures appear before Morningstar, standing over Octesian’s remains, except that every sign of him has been expunged in the demiplane’s sudden rebirth. Morningstar once trained in Ava Dormo with a being like these – an Avatar of Ell. Now six such beings stand in front of her. One that is taller and darker than the others steps forward and places a hand upon her brow.
“Morningstar Brightmirror. You are now and forever Ell’s Shadow, for you indeed are as the shadow cast by the Goddess into this world of Abernia. It has been centuries since Ell has declared a mortal champion. She does so now because Her need, and Abernia’s need, is at its greatest. There is one final task set before you: to descend beneath the Barrier of Yulan, to prevent the awakening, the full awakening, of our great enemy. Already He stirs, and the earth groans, and the animals die, and the sky trembles. Should He arise, he will split Abernia asunder, and all living things upon it will be flung into death. Beneath the Barrier you will be dim in the sight of Ell, but know that She is always with you, for you are Her shadow, and ever will She be your source of being. And She gives you this place as a gift – a place of sanctuary during your trials to come. You need only dream of it.”
All of the avatars bow before Morningstar.
“Go forth, Shadow of Ell. Dream of victory, and it will be yours.”
…to be continued…
