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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 1172500" data-attributes="member: 2323">[PLAIN][Draelond #2] Ruze[/PLAIN]Draelond turned in a circle, surveying the open plain on which he stood, absorbing the dull, slate-tinged scenery of the snowy landscape. He knew he should be feeling tremendous pain.  He knew he should be clinging to life by a thread, but here he stood... the question was... where was 'here'?As strange as everything around him seemed, it also carried with it a certain air of familiarity. Something about it made the strangeness in everything around him somewhat... okay. He again surveyed the landscape and had his first sense of true unease. From somewhere deep inside, through the chill that pervaded his bones, a flicker of warmth grabbed his attention. Before he was consciously aware of what it was, he heard himself utter the name, "Ibrahil."Equally without measure, he began to walk into the grayness, leaving behind the frosted ground upon which he had landed in this strange place. Not knowing exactly why he was doing so, but understanding that it was where he should go.  Gnawing at the back of his mind was the reality of his situation. There were so many things that "should be", that simply defied logic by their absence, but he refused to allow his mind to confront them at the present.He hadn't gone far when he began to hear the sounds of battle ahead and to his left. An awful cacophony of chains assaulted his ears, defiling the stillness with its clanking. For a moment, Draelond was transported back to Barnacus by the sound; he was standing outside the gates of Grey House with Badriembor guarding it against the Hand of Four...But that was impossible, of course.Badriembor was dead.And so were the members of the Hand of Four - three of them by his own hand.A blood-curdling shriek of fear clawed at Draelond's ears and before he knew what he was doing he'd moved away from his path and taken a few long strides toward the sound. It didn't take long for him to locate the source of the disturbance.The sound of clanking chains came from a gaunt figure. It was black, so black that it seemed to absorb the meager light, corrupting Draelond's vision as his eyes tried to define a shape that made no sense to his rational mind.  It seemed composed more of chains than flesh and its eyes and mouth blazed with turquoise fire. The air around it was alive with animated chains whose links bore terrible spikes and dripped with black wetness.The screams were coming from the thing's victim.She was a human woman of indeterminate age wearing intricately tooled plate mail. She bore a shattered sword in a locking gauntlet and carried a large steel shield. Both the emblazoning on shield and a tattoo on her face bore the mark of Bane, the Tyrant God. She was bleeding from dozens - maybe hundreds - of slash wounds and struggled mightily against the chains that bound her limbs, but it did no good. A heartbeat after Draelond arrived, she was wrapped in a cocoon of barbed links.The black corruption turned its flickering blue-green eyes on Draelond and smiled. No sooner had it taken a step toward the warrior than a glowing silvery light manifested out of the falling snow to Draelond's right. The black figure recoiled from the light as if it had been splashed with acid and hissed impotently. An instant later it darted off into the gloom, dragging its burden as it went.Draelond turned toward the light and raised an arm to shield his eyes. It was a woman - or something like a woman. She was easily 8 feet tall, bald and green-skinned. A scowl of determination was on her face. She carried an enormous silvery falchion in one muscular hand and a great pair of feathery white pinions rose up from her back. She extended her empty hand in Draelond's direction."I was sent for you," she said in a voice that was dripping with goodness and purity.Draelond extended his hand to her, but she raised her falchion and kept him at bay with the flat of the blade. He saw then that she was reaching passed him at another figure that came staggering out of the falling snow.Ruze came forward and took her hand in his, a look of ecstasy on his face. Tears streamed down his pudgy cheeks as he looked up at the glowing winged figure. "You're beautiful," he said, his voice cracked with emotion. "So are you," she said and smiled back at him. "We're all beautiful in Her glory. Come. You have earned your reward."</blockquote>

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