Sidequest: Aconitum

20220611-Sidequest-Aconitum 

http://www.ruggenberg.nl/titels.html 

Stripped Ashes, The Rough Luck, Nobody of Son, The Scent's Time, The Snow of the Shards, Gift in the Hunter 

(1, 4)

1 Stripped Ashes

By the time you read this I’ll have already healed from a terrible battle. 

The grass was tall from the late springtime and dry the day before it would rain, in the setting sun, gray and brushing the air like paper chimes a hundred miles with tides of breeze with distant clouds darkly edged and radiant glow, the static of time reached thru the air from a forgotten star striking away the last moisture from the prairie, before the rains came the thunder, before the clouds came the fire struck by lightning. 

Past noticing the blaze a hundred running steps, thinking of horses and hearts and telling them both to keep quick, the sweat puts shame to rains fading into fog lowered and boiling in tumbling swirls of smoke in lines that move if as snakes were flying, and witout turning I am bit between the shoulders, turning to see an archer turning to shoot again, struck in the heart by a great hunter, shooting two arrows as one next, glancing my face and pinning my hand beside my head to a tree of birch or beech, it would not matter which stood with me as both were burned in the wildfire. 

My open wounds covered with ashes, my blood mixing with it to become simple soap as if to wash away my sins, I lie with the lye, the small lizard people called Kobolds come to gather charred wood and ashes for their needs and find a broken body, pouring more water, packing more ashes, starting small campfires around the body they’ve found, chanting superstitious syllables of forgotten meaning and renewed intentions to summon life from the scars of near oblivion. Something has come in shadow form with one hundred arms for its outline, perhaps a centipede, rattling with bones and reeds, perhaps a snake, forcing venom and opiate into the wounds, sealing them into darkness.

2 The Rough Luck

In the caves of the kobolds opening eyes find only the nether dwelling creatures almost in grasp without reach of my arm, an unsettling taste and texture better of the two, the feel of scars becomes a pride of willpower adjusting to the dark light until sight returns where interesting black lines become my many jagged scars a molting skin halted and sealed, healed and seared shut, in pain my bones mend starving and crawling like a shedding snake with many grasps at the scurrying food until the days pass until sitting up, days again until trying to stand for plates of varmint delicacies sometimes even cooked, days again and when I wake there is a kobold shaman, with many sharp bones tied to himself, shaking a rattling stick. 

It shouts pain into my mind, a hangover would be jealous as am I, perhaps struck at least with hunger I sink asleep. It shouts me awake, chatty and hissing, clicks and lisping without any chance of understanding, so I beg for water and food, which only causes it to attack me, hit in the head I fall asleep, awake the next time readily striking the shaman he turns to dust and glitter and smoke drifting down, a great and pure laughter behind me it turns and leaves, as I follow. 

A beautiful hall lined with wood smooth as tables covered with engravings no less than masterful art, stopping to admire and then sit only being pushed, quite rudely, without scratching the floor and dirtying the chairs, where I would not want to sit without cushions despite being a throne room. Then, into a cavern of scaffolding and weapons like crafty rats the collection of catapults and bows with flat carts and barrels stops me to wonder what side of the surface was this world, nevertheless. The upward tunnel breathes fresh air into my soured starving lungs, but they stop in front of me, forced to show my swordsmanship slowed by deep scarring, spellcraft slowed by deep headache and only presto gunpowder, but by the words of the summoning spell they made, if not let me, fireside broth and soup of unfortunate meat and common root, bringing me a book, not of spells, but of described pictures, a day for the letters, a day for the words, a day for sentences too difficult to remember, giving means for safe passage in their tunnels, subtle symbols for spotting their territory. 

3 Nobody of Son

Great luminous sky high noon bringing gold to the blue heavens, my travels take me to a tavern while my journey continues for two days before seeing a town of average people and worthy size, at the public house the entry unnoticed by the many not the publican, I drink as if it were food to pour it into my stomach after days without delights and wait for it to wash the taste from my mind. A hunter buys a cider, but doesn’t drink it, I am perturbed and shout at him and by sentence end honorably drinks to my hurrah and crowd huzzah. 

I tell a joke and the man doesn’t drink and letting such go I ask for work in the way of filth and unsightly things, the man shuns and retains indignance and letting such things go I do magic of small forms with coin and card and crafty lies and the man walks himself and a knife to my back and doesn’t breath and not letting such things go I grab him by the neck and take his knife and make my demands to know what it is that he knows about me I never did. 

Tell me what the wicked knows and do not bet against it. 

You’re supposed to be dead, in the fires that feasted on you, by the arrows I put thru you, you were never alive at that point. 

Many points you put in me…did you start the fire? 

I look around at the new audience, they do not move but to look at the man. 

No, no never, your enemy called you evil, having cheated death you could let me live and disprove the rumor. 

Who is my enemy? Who sent you?

The man raises his arm and I raise his weapon, only pausing him pointing to the outside, honesty without question everyone is only moments from the exit, my grip undone to see which way the man departs, stepping in reverse and turning to run out the back, leaving me to grab a bottle and walk into the street. 

4 The Scent’s Time

A white sky over faaded rooftops I can hear a bird fly, from the foe in the lane, a werewolf warlock in skeleton armor and sharp gauntlets over his hands with long claws at each finger. 

Your body wasn’t in the ashes, it should’ve been so. 

Pity that. Who are you?

Never send a man to do a monster’s work, wouldn’t you agree? 

Tell it to someone who cares. 

The werewolf warlock reaches into a bag of grain and tosses them onto the ground and laughs like a child at play. 

Your end will mean a new beginning, for your crimes against the syndicate of the page-turner. With your death I will be made man again. 

How does that work, fleabag, praytell. 

I will trade your bones in exchange for my freedom. 

Meaning I can’t kill you and find out who sent you. 

It seems to me, you don’t want to talk about it. 

(loading sequence)

I charge at the werelocke, he shouts “Kresik” and the grains in the street flash and grow to burning wheat like vines and fire trying to consume me, wrested and wrought jumping back I see the mangey fucker on a rooftop, without cape three meters high launching the sharp end of a gatepost thru my chest half a second too slow, just as I turn I hear it flying thru the air, off guard imbaanced and falling into another unholy vines of fire trap and now I must disgard my cape. 

I reach for the blade of the sharplight, where there isn’t one after the fire, lost or found, leaping into fire, heavy is the werelocke landing on the ground and onto the same spear thrown at me, howling terrible into the sky bellicose roaring shakes thought to darkness before throwing the spear aside and me with it, into the wagon of wheat, as it heals with magic one clawed paw cover its wound, the other claw reaching at me the entire payload of seeds grown to black fire spines and whips as could seem the ropes of hell and there unable to escape I punch out of the overturned wagon. 

There is a moment, seconds before the werelocke will look, to scan the area and find what prey remains for what is still a three meter werewolf whose powers have gone from its eyes, only song of wolf and eyes of hate with my sent, facing the enemy with choice to run or jump, we’re left inside a ring of fire as it begins to rain. 

5 The Snow of the Shards

The ashes begin falling and as I breathe smoke my scars begin to revive me, cherishable energy each breath my scars begin to glow as I summon rain whose water revives the werelocke, he blows across water in his hand and deep cold blinds me until only the fire in my veins warms me, but reveals me in the clamoring mist, it becomes difficult to see how the rains become snow around the beast, mud freezing around my feet as I am torn with every claw on his hand and lifted off the ground, while he punches a wall with me pierced and flain I use my magic to burn my veins and scars bright nerves burning until released, showing his hand coated in snowy shards of strange mineral, both mirror and fire now reaching my throat, hitting his spear wound does nothing and escape begets panic until there is ten paces between us. 

I was expecting this to be easier. 

Tired, slow, pathetic lumbering clown. 

Hard, careful, immutable, sounds like me. Give up?

The piece of his snow shard glove is like perhaps like the inside of sharplight, if not the same, I remember the future of my salvation reaching out my hand holding it, like a nightmare the reflection in his eye is slower than my strike against it, animal instincts are vicious and effective quickly throwing me before setting another trap of immutable vines from the ground, I lead the dance and simply move just before the beast can leap onto the spear and his own trap. 

You have your wish, old friend. 

As long as we have. 

No one is going to help a lost wizard. 

You are lost as all are, stay down. 

If they find you, this is my curse, we are no more than old trails of your blood.

6 Gift in the Hunter

The rain stops and becomes ashes for eleven seconds then it stops. 

The bones of the werewolve begin to shrink and break like cork trees in the desert, returning to form the fallen and lost creature whose mane and mask dry and break away from sullied and dirtied skin, revealing the face of his oldest if not one of my best friends, I’d seen him not but a year ago when the summer became the silent winter, fit for an autopsy laying in shadows of the afternoon as the sun and onlooking survivors return. The curse of his size leaving him in the rags of a drunken animal at a festival the publican drapes the cape over him, putting a hand on my back, giving pause my curiosity at the crystals as a clue, a terrible fate to make someone suffer, a great lesson it comes with great surprise like a storm of lies or petals, as looking at me there is an eye in the glass frozen and unnatural with an extra ring around curious fire, quickly taking the rest of the silver glass with the pieces sharp and sinewed stuck to the spear with drying blood intent on solving this puzzle, and hoping the reflection isn’t mine. 

/br

M363 + Shadow of a Soul

Merlin + 3:63 + Shadow of a Soul

Close to ground of stone and soil is a fog thinner than whisper, enough that dew drops permeate the slope of a moonlit mountainside, the basin of bog and willows a valley of purity and moonlight, as stars and ethereal sky cover everything aside a tall and endless spine of mountainous ridge that distantly bifurcates many times with the great triumvirates of mountain, mystery, and night. Calm and quietus as her mighty egret carries Kylesa Mara above reflective ponds, in air it knows not day or night, the phoenix and rider Troy wait for her near the summit where the dins of battle cannot yet be heard, for this is the side of peacefulness where reflection of light from white feathers glows into his much radiant eyesight. In the same moment the avian opens for her landing beneath its wings faintly echoes the sound of conflict.

O’er the mountain, its other side much darker, the moon hangs as an angle of it, to look downward at the sight of dangerous edges and hidden mosses, dark shadows beneath each crag and jagged spiny scale of the granite, filling age-long cracks with weeds to blindly pull in disaster. This ground to climb unwelcoming by the blindfolded enemies and worse by the moonlight making villains into werewolves only on the heads of boulders, making them targets to the eyeless on the shadow-stricken rise. If not a werewolf oneself, imagine wounds that only heal in moonlight as Sino’s army attacks. Never slipping they slash at beasts who can pull into shadows to hide in mortality, dragging their wounded into being surrounded where the advantage is to the servants of the moonlight, and in this conflict even the men with the scarves on their eyes are still human, their stamina tested and having rested, despite the artifacts of protection to thicken skins or kindle dark magic’s purest sins, agility of foot and speedily stepping on the fallen as if the night ground were memorized.

A few torches lay aground strewn, flickering firelights against their faces distracted, a howl behind a stone from wounded hybrid without his moonlight magic, he is alone and restless, and then he is surrounded, but he smiles with bloodied face, for they are the surrounded. The mountainside is indolent and quiet as it swallows desolate echoes with fog and grass.

Werewolves feeding in the distance on the guards of the mountain, at their boundary new screams for new blood for new feeding rites of passage and power of healing, as the last man leaves the shadows for the passing moonlight he becomes a stoic wolf and feeds on the cursed.

A distant darkness serves silent footsteps where the earth sleeps, the trees hold their breath in fear of dropping leaves in her presence, Lilith, the first bloodborn, walks thru shadows like withering waves up the mountain, she is invisible in the moonlight and silent in darkness to the blindfold-men, a face of rage she does not blink. Her path is purposed and clear, passing by fighters for the violence, as blood familiar and new sprays into the wind, the bloodshed sprays on her face and lips is the smell in the air and taste on her fingers as her eyes become night.

As the night builds to crash across the sunset valley behind the other side of the mountains, the many caverns are a contrast of torches and inescapable blackness, where we find Sino balancing both, torch in left hand, a potion in the other that swirls three dark colors, his hand trembles, his eyes frenetic like panicked sleep as he drinks it. He calms unnecessarily, with eyes closed he hears the coven footsteps of intruders and digs his heels turning in the dirt.

The sound of a growing stormy sky becomes one with clashing steel and shield, a fist strikes a claw. Sino puts the necklace received from Belladonna around his wrist, firmly but cautious of the tunnel exits. Vampires approach the cavern, silent steps carrying sternly carried leather armor and the occasional scar, emptying themselves slowly into the open.

Uriel: Do – not – walk more!
Sino: A command… …by f* who…?
Vermillion: I am Vermillion.
Sino: How colorful.
Vermillion: I’ve come for the blood of traitors.
Sino: You’ve come for the blood of the undead?
Vermillion: Have you cheated death?
Sino: So many this day could be the anniversary of it. Have I cheated you?
Vermillion: If I find you’ve granted a stay to my betraying minions, so you have.
Sino: Their crime?
Vermillion: Stealing an immortal not theirs.
Sino: Tall like a corn stalk, funny even with a dagger in his heart?

Ana cries with her heart of fear and soul of desperation loudly from the next room.

Ana: I KNOW OF WHERE THEY ARE, THEY TOOK ME FROM HIM, THAT MONSTER BETRAYS YOU IN THIS MOMENT, I WILL TAKE YOU TO THEM!
Sino: You are many and this is your mountain, search it readily, but my guest, she won’t be taken.
Vermillion: Why wait to stop us…. (smile)….no dragon, Sino?
Sino: To hell with you!

Sino raises his hand and the green magic of the stone covers them, a pain and anguish as many escape others suffer verdant fire making them claw at the ground. Sino’s soldiers run into the cavern beginning to help him stab the accursed.

Blindfolded Man (Velen): Wolves attack, we are losing our numbers!
Sino: Dammit!

Sino puts his hand to the blind-soldier’s chest, the heart slows then stops. The blind soldier feels cold, green magic thunders thru him appearing as a green vapor warmth.

Sino: Vimond, you are my greatest soldier, but you will only survive if others die.
Vimond: I understand, I will destroy what I see.

The blindfolded soldier leads others toward vampires within the tunnels, Sino looks at his own hand to see it glow, the radiance courses into him and his eyes cloud, the soldier he touched runs with a fainter aura than the rest.

Vermillion walks around looking at things in the high-mountain dungeon and reminiscing at the walls, the blindfolded soldier that Sino had touched charges at them, but they the vampires are too skilled to defeat, almost taunting the blind, but refuse to fight the soldier without a heartbeat, shunned from conflict and outright ignored.

As the vampire monarch taps his finger on something, the blind-soldier wanders at the sound of the ticking dethklok, the vampires are confused by the fading heart and dragging feet, stumbling toward their monarch in timeless fashion, but with a failing heart falls forever short.

Vermillion: I guess his heart wasn’t in it. 

/ mj.banks / 

M359: The Serpent Servant

M359: The Serpent Servant

Kylesa hurries herself into a building and urges the scared languescents to exit while there is vacant opportunity to flee and before the undead swarm them, they languidly leave their confines following to sudden swarm and are overcome. Sino watches Troy use his surroundings in leverage and springs from impossible distance swift and flighty, comparative to fain glory and realization commemorate, he sees Troy’s magic and gives himself into thought.

A powerless rise for any mischievant, doted by the soulless wanderers staring on Lilith in her glory, wandering malaisant extático and like them hoping the next hexed she seeks presents itself to its execution.

The phoenix begins to nest as saturnine in slumber while the bodies continue mounting consumed by walking into scoria and becoming ashes. In arginine ash it cools and continues to tire, the roaming shells of lives fuel an onset regeneration dilemmatic, Merlin shouts to Troy thereto the leaping rider startles phoenix into motion and thereof depart leaving Merlin at a defenseless start against urgent horde.

Several lengths of distance separated, Merlin enters the street facing Sino, as buildings burn do others cinder by the waves, of twilight approaching do walls buckle as embers rumble do crematories crumble, by a tufted billow of black smoke Sino disappears. In a ginnel passage, Sino finds two things, an exit and Ophiuchus drinking blood with a gaze and from a neck that are broken, silently standing drops the body and approaches him.

Oph: Nothing has changed, master Sino.

Sino pushes his hand to his chest and him to the wall.

Sino: Remember that.

Oph shakes him loose and walks onto the chaos. Sino places his hand on a corner beam of a building and closes his eyes, he lifts his hand and departs a glowing handprint, steadily the glow becomes a fire. r

The rain keeps the fire from leaping to and between rooftops, but there is a subtle resonance to the embers of remaining fires. Dour muddied vampires find Mara in the street, watching her walk backwards from the onslaught of infected, ignorant to her guise they pause as she flees.

Werewolves rush toward the vampires only to search thru the bodies and fell the infected, they turn quickly toward the vampires, readily armed to defend themselves but slowly exiting they point to where Mara has run.

Troy: Werewolves, what do they want?
Kylesa: Let’s not soon learn how so.

They aim arrows at wolves climbing walls, but there are others whom attack before arrows fly. They have leapt and pinned both Troy and Kylesa to the rooftop, learning their scent.

Lupirion: Stay still.
Canaris: This smells of Sino – get tell the huntress!
Troy: Had we, just, a tale of conflict.
Canaris: Simple boy

A short laugh, smells again, she trembles.

Canaris: This is not the stench of conflict. Go!

Berserkers depart. Sincerely she screams.

Multifarious contempt for decency, Sino continues collapsing buildings with rage and fire, over and thru flames of walls and rising ruble, trapping Merlin into an arena enclosed with the serpent servant.

Ophiuchus, flippant by hunger of vengeance only looks forward, Merlin steps behind him, his raised hand near the villain’s shoulder begins to glow, by the time Oph turns, noticing the light, Merlin triggers a large explosion of blue fire, harmless to himself, yet throwing Oph many measures.

Oph stands with esoteric time enough to be without words. The hole in his leather almost as wide as his back he discards his vestments of robe and jacket, his skin sheds slightly over the burn, the body long possessed slumped and lethargic is now mightily robust, muscles of rage and carrying the tempo of a steady heartbeat in his veins occasionally, a snake swims under his skin, as the snake passes under the back the skin heals. His eyes roll into his head.

Oph: This doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of my power.
M: Not your usual self?
Oph: Yes, waste your time –

Sino spying the battle decides to leave at first sight of conflict, one of the wolfmen running pushes him over a walkway thru a ceiling into a burning building.

Angered into alertness, Sino cracks his knuckles with fists and begins punching one as more crawl for entry. Three against one in close burning quarters, he hits each opponent with swift force, missing a swing he is hit twice before regaining defense before renewed attack, each strike missed he is struck twice over the same. His attack skill is double two of theirs, but his defense is the same as each by scale of one. His dexterity is less than theirs as they ascertain his stamina and begin to gnarl him, as they must face a black flame magic from his blood there is an evolving rage of fire and beast.

M: What hast Sino durst to thee to make my opponent?
Oph: Much that I must, little that I dare.
M: I’m sorry, but people change.
Oph: You don’t recognize me?
M: Should I?
Oph: You know me. I first took a boy to such not only did you steal my lunch, but you twisted me in the wind and left me in a road wrought of my essence.

Merlin’s face loosens to ponder, his head tilts to memory, of trees and winds of distant clouds.

Oph: Shedding skin having hunted you in a city with a disturbing amount of twins, I sought revenge, not supper, you then chopped me with a scabbard blade, almost killing me. Do you remember it?

A memory of soldiers and gallows of dusty roads.

M: You!? Perhaps I should burn you out!
Oph: You dare!

Sino fights the last of aggrieved three, despite bleeding arms and neck. But for battered across midsection, screaming with every shock by the time, he overcomes the final werewolf. The wolves’ hearts outward tears he while almost laughing. Squeezing the blood from a werewolf heart over his head and face he hears shouting from beyond the burning room.

Oph: Fallen, devoted, devour the burning world!

The dead that have risen focus on Merlin, in a gust of wind the proxy of foes tumble and theretofore the ghouls upon him, his hands glow and electricity leaps between his fingers and with their skulls in his hands.

Ophiuchus gradually steps rarely blinking. His host’s eyes are dullening and dry, sullen and red around edges, his tongue flickers mindless with each thought. The dead risen rise yet again, from floors they are bloody, from rubble they are dusty, from fire they are burning, walking toward Merlin who strikes them with his magic. They amass as he swings chairs, commotion brings him to hold a table top as shield only to kick it against a grouping of swarthy several and a bygone burner bashing a bottle of booze to burn them all and raise the acrid flames toward the gods. Forcedly, he jumps thru flames landing to surprise of a knife wound to arm from foe. He sends Ophiuchus to the wall with wind and rescinds the penetration.

The mist becomes light rain pouring enough cloud-cover to allow unnerving twilight.

Oph: I grow tired. Do you feel like dying quickly, Merlin, or should I torture you first?
M: I do appreciate such good timing. It’s good to have choices.
Oph: I think we all do.

Agnar, who some would say is twice the size of Ophiuchus’ host, picks him upward and throws him outward, but he will not be thrown easily, grasping at the sleeves he falls into the base of a wall that buckles, the fire has taken its roof and the rain taken the flames, but the center is a furnace. Ophiuchus digs feet running into the wall’s main beam making it topple onto Agnar. As he avoids fire flourishing and more of the insatiable dead, Agnar pulls himself from the rubble.

Agnar: Clip his wings!

Merlin attacks before the dead find him, thirteen exchanged punches and Merlin breaks Ophiuchus’ hand, he sets the bones and continues fighting.

M: Let’s break something else.

A hammering swing of anger starts eleven more and breaks the same arm, the limb straightens with his sign of pain.

Oph: Why are you so difficult!?

Seven more and he breaks the other arm, but Ophiuchus continues fighting, lame swings and shoving, a head-butt to weak effect.

M: Now I see your final moments.
Oph: I’m slowing you down, right where I want you, give up while you can.

Five absurd swings and he wrenches his foe’s shoulder.

M: What good would come in efforts just.

Three terrible struggles and Merlin kicks the knee to buckle bringing Oph to the ground.

Oph: This isn’t over.
M: Yes, it is… …into the moonlight.

Merlin snaps Ophiuchus’ neck, his body falls surfeit.

Agnar unburies himself by throwing the stones of the wall at the undead, Jonak arrives and cuts his own hand with a knife and speaks a terrible sound.

Jo: Give your hearts to me.

The undead begin tearing out their hearts and offering them to Jonak as they fall around them with black and blood hearts rolling. As Merlin attends to Agnar, Belladonna walks with pestilential fog beside her, she sees the snake master slither from the mouth of the body, to stop it she creates walls of fog to confine its direction. The smoke pains the snake and it moves faster until at the feet of Lilith who takes it between her claws.

Lilith: All this from a familiar…

She examines it squirming, biting her to no affect.

Lilith: I hope it was worth it.

She tilts her head and eats the snake, her eyes begin to close and she moans with a hundred voices, her eyes roll white as the ground and nearby buildings shake.

Lilith: Bittersweet.