GoldenCat/FalloftheLight
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- - Back to A Dance of Angels
Fall Of The Light
Screams, the clash of metal and other... unearthly sounds wake Fiona up, to the sight of Maria, bleeding... cut through her abdomen, marks like claws... bleeding pretty badly, almost beyond recover for a mortal...
The thoughts that race on Fiona’s mind are impossibility. She saw the walls to Whiteshield’s capital, the gigantic Orichalcum war machine guarding its gates. If anything, the city is too well protected... too well-protected for things to be so... sudden!
It is... that time, the dreaded Calibration... but, even then...
This couldn’t be possible. But it is too real. It cannot be no nightmare either.
Fiona: Fiona blinks, disoriented for a moment at the noise and wondering if she's still asleep and dreaming, until she hears Meira's voice. "Oh my gods, Meira!" she scrambles over, kneeling beside the injured woman and putting a hand on her.
Whiteshield: As she manage to cut her clothes and some tissues to staunch the bleeding, her blood, covered hands touch her face, "Thanks, child... but... dun worry... about... an old woman like me... the royals... help the royals... the kids...." She says, her eyes those of someone who seems like she saw exactly what hell looks like.
Fiona: "Okay," she nods, starting to realize what must be going on and calling to mind a spell that she might need here, "hang on, I'll go help them!" Scrambling to her feet, she runs for the hallway.
Darkness: As soon as Fiona opens the doors, she sees a little bit of hell. Walking, almost pushing their way towards the lybrary, are around twenty corpses... walking, shambling their way towards Fiona. Most of them are old, ragged corpses with just a bit of putrid flesh still clinging to their bones, but some are more close to what they looked at when alive... she remembers them as being house servants... and even mrs. Brooks' gardener son.... their eyes empty, their bodies moving with a singular purpose, all heightened by the fact such a fair and succulent source of living warmth opened a door in front of them....
Fiona: Fiona 's eyes widen in shock - she wasn't expecting this! Taking a deep breath, her mouth dry, she raises her hands...
... and the light of the Unconquered Sun blazes from her forehead, but the phantom wind that whips back her hair is cold, chill as the grave, and blackness flickers between her hands. "Time's sand to glass and glass to life, I call the turning of the wheel, the closing of the page." The blackness congeals, a flickering distortion condensing into deadly beauty as the corridor fills with a hail of glittering butterflies, black as night and deadly sharp. “Death of Obsidian Butterflies!”
Darkness: The Obsidian blades go through the corpses, cutting body and limb, a slaughterhouse as they fill the corridor, making all of the undead fall to the ground, hurt, but still... moving. The butterflies fall with them, biting deep into their flesh, cutting their spines, legs and heads, throwing all of them to the ground... without movement, but shredded hands still moving, wanting to touch something, to grasp something...
Fiona: Fiona runs down the corridor, hopping lightly over the writhing forms without looking too closely at them, heading for the royal family's chambers; she can see the point in what Maria was saying, whoever is behind this attack must be primarily after the royal family.
Darkness: As she walks towards the royal quarters, she passes through the stairs leading to the entrance hall... and in it, the fight with the Undead. A group of them bars her way. Zombies and War Ghosts and a... thing. A thing of many arms and many torsos, a centipede of torsos sewed into one another, moving on clawed hands, with a single torso up like some sick centaur... they turn to Fiona...
Queen Adrianna:.....And then a bird of pure elemental flames wails as it goes towards them, exploding and engulfing the undead in fire, their bones exploded by the initial conflagration, their ashes falling as rain, the centipede still.. alive? Moving... shrieking as it burns... and then, a familiar voice, coming from below along with many of the men... Adrianna, the queen, eldritch symbols fading around her, "Fiona!"
Fiona: "Your majesty!" she heads that way, skirting around the burning centipede. "What's happening? Where is everyone?"
Queen Adrianna: The guards spread around her, fighting incominng undead, Adrianna smiling at Fiona as she comes down, as if she was looking at their hope.... "I... don't know! My children... they are in their rooms! Otieno is guarding them! My husband..." A melodious thunder comes from outside the hall, the ravaged walls making Fiona see only the light and hearing the confrontation, but not seeing it.... "... is outside." As she finishes, the well-trained elite guard finishes cutting the undead of the hall, and dissipating the ghosts.
Fiona: Fiona nods, glancing around wide-eyed. "What do we do now?"
Queen Adrianna: She looks out... at the fight outside, then up... on the way Fiona took before, biting her lip. "You... go for my children. Keep them safe..."
I should have known this would happen, at this time...
Fiona: "Okay!" she nods - having a definite task to carry out is good for concentrating the mind - and runs in the direction of the princes' and princess's rooms.
Charmaine: Before She can leave, though.... she feel it. Magic... just... not.
Suddenly, with the sound of wood ripping and breaking, pillars of sharp bone rise from the ground, the sound of ripping flesh heard right after... the hall is reorganized in a forest of ivory spines, one of them hitting Adrianna's side, almost going through her... she barely escapes being torn through like the rest, magic glowing on her hand, ready to be poured out.... at an approaching figure, hair of scarlett, wrapped robes of darkness, the regalia of a nun. She smiles up to Fiona, eyes on her caste mark as she walks in... her caste mark the same, but black. Charred black, as if branded on her forehead by fire. And she smiles.
Queen Adrianna: How could they go through the walls, through our city, like this? Through Cerl’s vigil on her Warstrider post? How could so many War Ghosts and Zombies break through, like this... as if someone had opened a door to the Labyrinth within our Manse... The queen thinks, readying another bird of flame for the necromancer walking calmly towards her.
Someone did. It was her.
Adrianna coughs blood, her eyes narrowing in one sentence.
At Fiona, with all her authority, not even looking back.
"Go!"
Fiona: Fiona leaves, running, not walking! She has definite orders to carry out, no need for standing around in indecision! She goes for Cedric first, he being the least able to defend himself.
Darojess: As she goes in Cedric's room, she see... creatures.Ghosts, misshapen, nightmarish translucent demons, covered in many eyes and thorns, with misshapen ruined wings.
Pushing Cedric on one hand towards the window... tendrils, on their gnarled fingers, entering the child’s chest, probing his soul for... something, as he squirms, in unconscious pain as they search within him...
The guards dead on the floor, Millia knelt down, eyes wide, covered in blood....
Fiona: Fiona raises her hands, the cold wind whipping back her hair again as she chants the incantation, darkness congealing into a storm of elegant death, obsidian wings gleaming in the light of the Unconquered Sun as they slash into the skeletons, above the heads of both the boy-prince and the knelt girl...
As the butterflies fly, they cut through the ghostly monstruosities, their corpus rent to little pieces, falling down like snowflakes as their forms lose coehsion... the little prince falling to the ground, unconscious.
"Cedric!" she runs over. "Millia!" Do they appear to be more or less uninjured?
Millia: Cedric is unsconscious, seeming even more cute, and pretty, amidst that obscene scene, and totally unconscious. Yet, something of him feels.. sullied, as if part of the things was left within his soul. and Millia can just look at them, wide-eyed, blood splashed over her face, her mismatched black and red eyes seeming to meld with the blood over her, repeating, "...Inside.. young master... inside...” closer examinations shows the blood is of the guards, not hers’, she is not hurt, simply... in shock.
Fiona: "Millia! Carry Cedric! We've got to get out of here!"
Millia: "He... we can't, he just... it was... within him..." She says, wide-eyed...
Fiona: Fiona shakes Millia's shoulder. "Come on Millia, please! We need you!"
Millia: "...Fiona? I... I... Cedric! She says, hugging the boy, taking him away from the hands, still clawing the floor in his direction. "Fiona....?"
Fiona: "Carry him and follow me!" she scrambles to her feet, beckoning Millia, and runs for the princess's room.
Alexander: As Fiona steps into the Princess' room, she goes through a smashed door... steps over the body of Otieno, cut by great spectral claws... and sees Alex, his blows golden with essence, hitting one of those things with a sword, again, and again, and again... until his blade breaks on the bone fragments, his eyes covered in tears, "Die, die die die DIE!" He says, breaking what is left of the sword... the misshapen bone thing broken, as are some... how many? More on the room...
Fiona: "Alex! Where's the princess?"
Alexander:"They took her..." he says, hitting it again. "These things took my sister!"
Fiona: Fiona grabs a piece of lingerie or whatever intimate item of the princess's comes to hand, takes a deep breath, raising her hands; the radiance that appears this time is a heatless blue flame, casting a cool light over the dismembered skeleton on the floor, a breeze whipping in through the door and window. "Compass of all things, link that was made and can never be unmade, find that which I seek."
The bird of blue flames flies away, in the direction of the main hall....
"This way!" she scoots after it.
Alexander: As they all run into the main hall.... Alex's eyes widening as he sees his mother's corpse... kneeling down over it, holding her body in his hands, dead... "Mother...? Mom...?" Millia looks in eyes just as wide, at her and the carnificine of the hall turned into a forest of bone razors and disemboweled people..... holding Cedric against her chest....
The bird is waiting... pointing.... outside.
Fiona: Fiona feels oddly detached as neural circuits cut into to keep the scene from overloading her mind; it's someone else looking at the blood, the staring eyes. "Alex!" she hears herself say, sees herself grab his hand and try to pull him to his feet. "Carina's outside! Your sister needs you, come on!"
Alexander: Alex lets himself be pulled by Fiona, without offering much resistance, running after her, trying not to think, trying to just go after her, see his sister... that is... until they all get outside, to witness a clash of titans.
With the royal blade Ainerach in hand, shining like a shaft of sunlight on his hand, king Doniel faces a giant of black marble, standing about 8 feet tall, parrying his blows, powerful enough to split earth and crush bodies, pushing it back with every strike, that explodes as the purest light touches the vilest darkness... and Fiona can see... so many, wailing faces in the dark marble body of the giant... a Visage of a Thousand Demises.
And, behind them... broken, burned... most showing the signs of the heavenly royal blade, burning at the king’s feet... a throng. Undead all around you, hungry ghosts, zombies... things of bone and flesh that should never be.... the guards fight them... and fall. On the distance a great giant of gold comes, alone amidst a sea of shadows...
It is overwhelming, and even if they fall, the light falls more and more...
Fiona: In crisis situations, people often fixate on one particular thing, and right now Fiona's fixated on carrying out the queen's last order to save her children. Ignoring the lurid scene, she looks frantically in the direction the bird's flying, trying to make out Carina.
Charmaine: "Going anywhere, pretty?" A voice comes before you, the undead partying to allow a figure of blood-red eyes and hair, wrapped in a dark, heavy robes, a nun of death realition, to pass through... the same one that covered the main hall with bones. "You and the boys will go no further, pretty."
Fiona:"Who are you? What did you do with the princess?!"
Charmaine: "Vestal of the Livid Lamasery is my name, pretty. My title. But you can call me Charmaine if you wish... and the princess, she is mine now. A pretty to play with before she is delivered to the Shining Lord, as is his wish." She says, her anima shining black around her. "Will you surrender like a nice pretty, or shall I make you knee? Will you give me your name before that?"
Fiona: "Sent to your master? What do you mean? Who is your master?"
Charmaine: "Just that.She will be taken away, further West, to the last recesses of our icy pole to meet my master, the fated lord of oblivion and all of underworld, the Bishop of Cacedony Thurible. He seems to be found of these Holyswords, you see... he wants their shinies, and he wants each and every one of those pretties in his chambers. And still I don't get a name, pretty? Will I have to take it out of after I have humbled you?"
Fiona: "My name's Fiona... and I'm here to protect the royal children. I won't surrender."
Charmaine: "I will have to make you surrender then, won't I?" She says, black lighting flickering around her wrist, coalescing into a globe of dark energy she throws at Fiona, necrotic energy killing the air on the way, as her rose lips part to say, "Chain the bitch!"
As the dark essence hits Fiona, it throws her on the ground, feeling her flesh darken, her cloth turn to ashes in its borders, her body begin to feel.... cold.
And as it does, chains come from her sides, heavy chains tying around her arms and ankles...
Fiona: Fiona struggles helplessly against the chains, unable to do anything more to fulfil her duty.
Charmaine: "Well, well, Fiona..." She says, her heel coming to Fiona's face. "I'm taking you as mine now, Fiona. And when you are ready... I will make you my apprentice. Lick my feet, you little Solar bitch... it's the least you will lick of me after the master breaks you and hands you to me as a toy."
Fiona: Fiona closes her eyes for a moment, feeling dizzy as the shock of the night's events starts catching up with her. Shock, grief, despair, resignation... and fear, all take hold of her.
Alexander: The King fights valiantly... each strike with the radiance of the sword Ainerach like a melodious thunder, the chime of heavenly crystals.... other undead, nemessaries, try to attack him, but reflexively, he swats them away, burning their bodies in the purest flame, attacking the statue once again.. knowing he couldnt let the thing take a step.
”Fiona? Take my children out of here, now! We cant keep them here! We are lost... take them to my wife, go away with her, to Windia, anywhere!”
As he says so, he parries another of the blows.... shining less and less every blow, seemingly with no energy left... none to stop the last blow.
Fast as a Raiton, moving like a shadow over the grass. Pale kimono fluttering around him, a ornate sword of bone in his hand, he flickered in and out of existence... and then, stopped behind the king, and unfurled a garden of bone. Pale cherry blossoms wrapped around the king, and he struck at his back like the growth of the obscene benches of a tree of human bones, rupturing the kings heart, coming out on front, leaving him only a last look at his childrens faces...
The blossoms fall, breaking as petal-thin fragments of bone, as he looks emotionless at the dead king. And as his anima dies down, the Disciple of Ivory Blossoms looks at the prince... eyes dead-calm as royal blood trickles downfrom the ivory blade.
And then... Fiona can see the golden light, above her, even through closed eyelids. Memories come rushing back... of the surge of power... of the feeling of greatness.... the power within you awakening. Looking at your side... you see Alex, a symbol on his forehead... a full circle. A Zenith. Memories from before make you remember.. the priests, the prophets. Those who upheld the light of the sun the most, the bane of all undead! As he shines, the image of a great, powerful knight appears behind him, making him look the very image of the Unconquered Sun himself and before that, all the foul creatures of the Underworld run. He runs over to his fathers body...
No!
Charmaine shouts, but she cannot do much.. Alexs palm burns brightly, burning the clothes and pushing away the man who murdered his father... as he takes the sword.
The light pours from it, his fathers soul coming to it and reflecting... burning the bodies of all the fallen, of his family, his friends... sending their souls to heaven, and their bodies away from the touch of the Undead. Alex lifts the sword high, his eyes like molten gold, pouring light, as he looks at them, thunderous words coming from his lips, Get back, creatures of darkness! Betrayers... I remember all of you. I remember you... Dragon of Steam and Light, Lemia of the Golden Mark. Little in life, corrupted betrayers... get out of my sight or I will burn every last one of you! A movement of the blade and Necromancy unweaves, collapsing many of the undead...
Fiona: Fiona 's eyes go wide, feeling hope return. Alex! I wouldn't have guessed - but it feels right.
Alexander: As Fiona feels feel the chains go light around her, the undead scattering, Charmaine pushed back by the violence of the light, Alex, with these strange eyes of his, seeming older... older than time, takes her hand up... "You have seen better days, Rhiannon..." He says, taking her hand up... and kissing her.
Fiona: Fiona accepts the help, wobbling to her feet... and blinking, eyes wide at the kiss.
Alexander: He kisses with no shame, no hesitation, even a little too much eagerness... then breaks it, looking away. “The sword. It is keeping them, the others like us, away... confused.” All around, the souls still shine, the bodies still burn. Suddenly clear as day, Alex’s aura and the crackling around the sword keeping all the undead away... all broken and disorganized by the conflagration of the animas, of the burning bodies, of souls going to heaven... so strong that even her eyes are stung. She can only imagine what effect it has on those creatures of darkness.
“ But they are too many. too many, and this wont last. We have to go, Rhiannon.” He says, then looking at the sword... making it expand its crackling light, a Corona of Radiance shining from him. Looking at the sword, eyes widening... then, looking like Alex again, surprised, shocked... kneeling down on the grass...
Fiona: Fiona nods. Rhiannon...Alex, you... who were we... it's too much to really take in right now. "Alex," she says tiredly, "you're right... we need to go."
Aoexahder: "Everyone... Fiona... everyone... all of them, all of them..." Alex says, in shock....
Fiona: "Alex," she says gently, trying to take his hand and pull him up... again, it feels more like she's watching someone who looks like her do it... "Cedric and Millia need you... and we've got to find a way to rescue your sister... and to do that you've got to go now."
Alexander: Looking up to Fiona, Alex blinks some times, then gets up... the same attittude as Fiona. The blade shining on his hand, he looks at his brother, at Millia... and makes his decision. "Yes. We have to go... now." He says, the sun still ablaze on his forehead, "Like he said... we have to protect my brother, save my sister... and then, come back here. Let's go.”
Fiona: “I will catch up later. But you... you have to go! It is my duty to protect you...”
The flare begins to dim, and the Vestal steps back, towards them... the war ghosts close behind her, the statue of darkness keeping its distance... the horde of the dead stepping foward.
“Don’t discuss! This was an order from your mother.. to keep yoou safe! Just.. just... GO!”
Tears running down her face, remembering the kiss, she is covered by magic and incantation, looking at the approaching ghosts and zombies with the first tinge she ever felt of... hate.
Time's sand to glass and glass to life,
I call the turning of the wheel,
The closing of the page...
Death of Obsidian Butterflies!
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- - Back to A Dance of Angels
