| Irrin and the Beast of Moonlit Lake |

[mmat 7461]

Spoiler

OOC: There’s a nice looking piece of terrain near Elvenesse. I thought I’d write a short, quick myth for it.

South Almaris         |    ~2800YA

 

Why did you abandon us? The question, screamed silently without voice, was saturated with unshed tears, tears which, if they had been shed, would’ve displayed profound anguish to any who might’ve bore witness. Demoralisation too, and insecurity also. That could not be, not now. Did even I prove unworthy? Why did you not tell me? Unanswered, phantom questions, never to be satisfied. Suddenly, provoked by a melodic, trance breaking bird call on her left shoulder, the emerald green eyes of Irrin Sirame, closed in a momentary bout of self-pitying sadness, slid open once more in stoic tranquility. The slender, caramel-skinned Elf purposefully drew in a tepid breath of air as she surmounted the forested hillside, a sudden gust of unheralded wind prompting the bound fabric covering her form to flap for a brief moment. A clasped, elegant hand subtly gripped tighter the short, simple, but well fashioned spear in its grip, the she-elf keen not to lose her weapon as she cast her gaze upon what was, in reality, a rather small but picturesque lake. If what the rumours had said about this place were true, however, and a dark remnant of truly ancient evil had its dominion in this seemingly idyllic place, she would need this most reliable of tools, crafted in an age long gone. Still, Irrin was confident, but not so confident that she would lead her young people into such a malevolent nest of old terrors. It was to be her task alone. She was confident in the way a lion is confident that it can kill a foundling gazelle. It wasn’t arrogance, nor folly, just factual lethality, the degree of killing edge that only a thousand and more years of hard experience and constant practice could bestow. The kind of unrequited self-assurance derived only from the hardest of work, the most tumultuous of lives and unfavourable of beginnings. Irrin Sirame, spear in one hand, tenderly cast her unlooked for but not unwelcome avian companion back into the safety of the densely needled pines from whence it had come with the other. With that and another graceful breath besides, she girded herself to face a nightmare from a time that broke the world. 

 

Silently scanning the forest-enricled lake and its environs from a sheaf of long grass and shrubbery in the shadow of a small tree, Irrin narrowed a pair of suspicious eyes. Just a simple, quaint expanse of water feeding a gently rushing waterfall on the far side, somewhere to the Elven predator’s right. Exhaling a breath that could’ve been mistaken as a restless sigh, she thrust her spear into the earth as makeshift storage and then sat cross-legged, retrieving a beautifully carved composite bow from her back. She rested the marvelous work of woodcarving in her lap, ready to grasp at any time, and then waited. No evil of the old time could resist cowering in the shadows forever. It would try to belch itself out eventually. Short minutes went by first, followed by long hours. The tired sun dipped behind the wind-stricken trees and dark fell, plunging Irrin into still, soundless darkness penetrated only by the occasional chirping of a lakeside cricket or two. Time had little impact on the millennia-old being sat in open-eyed meditation among the inconspicuous shrubs, and so it seemed like no time at all had passed when the hitherto undisturbed waters at the lake’s centre, brightened by lunar luminescence, began roiling. Irrin’s eyes, trained with iron discipline for hours upon the apparently harmless lake, focused in an undisturbed instant. In predatory instinct, the Elfess took up her bow by the grip, reached over her shoulder and slowly threaded a serrated arrow from the quiver on her back. Nock. The arrow, held between index and middle finger, made its way almost without the owner’s thinking to the precisely correct spot between string and limbs. Irrin was too busy keeping an eye on the fleshy, barely lit tentacle-hand fusion floating ominously over to the shore on her side of the water, though it wasn’t too close. Draw. Irrin uncrossed her legs, braced with one bent knee and then pulled the bowstring back with a slight groaning of tension-strained string. The horror - an otherworldly slave of the unspeakable destroyer and remnant of the war for creation, as Irrin understood it to be, dragged its malignant, surprisingly wiry form fully onto the shore, dripping and wrapped in lake-weeds. Suddenly, all life went silent, fled from the unnatural, profane creation. It wasn’t meant to be a water-dweller, that much was for sure, but half-made stigmata had augmented the demon in the millennia since its breaching of the world. Brutal arms were mixed with squid-imitating tentacles. Most gruesomely, its ‘eyes’ had been scoured from its face, leaving only a slab-like, noseless mass interrupted only by a razor-sharp, fly-trap-toothed mouth possessing three predatory tongues. Loose. Irrin Sirame unleashed her first arrow.

 

Without waiting to see the shot land, as she knew it would, Irrin immediately ripped her spear from the earth and stood tall once more, coolly weaving her way through the undergrowth and around friendly heartwoods. The she-elf was no longer present when the amphibious demonic monster, its long, thin tentacle-limb torn half off by the brilliantly aimed shot, bellowed forth a pained, gurgled slurry of bile and lakewater. Perceiving the direction from which the arrow had come, its slablike, water-rotted visage turned toward the Elf’s initial hiding place, and then loomed towards it. Grinning internally from her new position, Irrin impaled the spear once more and replaced it with a straight, thin stick, scavenged from the ground. Pulling back her ultimately small, but still leanly muscled arm, she javelined the stick past the demon’s pitiful excuse for a head, where it audibly struck the trunk of a thicker tree just further on from the initial patch of grass. The blind malevolence followed in idiotic ignorance, sensing a path toward its mysterious prey but in fact moving further away. Not so clever. Irrin considered with keen, scornful focus, before checking her own arrogance. It has survived, hunted, for longer than I have lived.. With that hubris-banishing thought, the woman prepared her bow once more. Nock. Draw. Her ooze-exuding foe prowled slowly, the unharmed tentacle arm coiling its way around one of the trees. Loose. A second arrow trod its deadly path through the night air before burying itself in the thick, carapace-like plating on the being’s left leg. It roared once more, this time more in anger than agony, turned in Irrin’s direction with incredible swiftness and uncurled its tendril from the tree. Irrin narrowed her verdant eyes once more and gritted her teeth. Armoured flesh. With just enough time to replace her bow with the glaive-bladed spear, which she yanked from the ground and bore with practiced efficiency, the creature of nightmare charged, its feigned reactions far swifter than when it reacted to the first arrow. Wily thing. Irrin thought, suddenly grateful for the melee weapon she’d been so hesitantly convinced to bring.
 

Amid the fatherly trees and the fabulous moonbeams permitted to reach the wooded floor by their beneficence, a great Elf of elder days, trained by the first one himself, clashed with a beast from a time when the sky turned into black flame and the earth screamed in torment. Irrin kept that in her mind. How many of her people had this thing killed, maimed or devoured during that great war? Had it been something more in ages past, something of great intelligence devolved over the centuries? A stubby, half-severed tentacle lashing in Irrin’s direction caused her to banish the questions. Spear in hand, the warrior sprang back to dodge the malformed limb, which left a small, shaped crater in the earth. She backed up against the trunk of a tree. Perfect. Propelling her slim form onward, with the tree’s help, in an explosion of movement, Irrin skipped into range, evaded another tentacle whip and then jabbed once, twice, three times into the dark beast’s repugnant head. The roar of fury-tinted agony was more of a bestial howl this time, a sound which made its Elven tormentor smell blood, figuratively and literally. Its flat face was leaking the odourous filth, and Irrin found herself less concerned for her own safety and more for the pitiable land onto which it was bleeding. 

 

Before the demon could get another attempt off, the spear-bearing paragon quietened her breath, softened her tread and quietly dashed behind a nearby tree, unseen and unsensed. Focus. It’s slow, injured now too.. If I do that again though, it’ll react more swiftly. A thought quickly came to her once more, prompting the woman to crouch and grasp a handful of forest floor debris - chunks of bark, a few rocks and short, damp sticks. Leaning to the left, Irrin tossed the grapeshot of apparently useless refuse around the tree, their din prompting the resurgent, devolved creature to turn. It’s vulnerable. Peeling then to the other side, Irrin swiftly ghosted across the loamy earth with barely a sound. The despoiling thing only realised when it was too late. She leapt forth fleet of foot. using one of its stigmata growths as a foothold to jump once more. The spear’s airborne owner drew back to gain momentum and then thrust forth with deadly precision “Cernunnos!” came a passionate, but still measured exultation, the steel of Irrin’s spear cannoning straight into the weakened demon’s razored ‘mouth’ and out the back of its head. One more diminished gurgle and the things collapsed backward with a thud. The horror was dead before it landed. Irrin, whose spear, anchored through its head had kept her steady during its fall, yanked the weapon free and then dismounted it, watching as the form and corruption alike dissolved into nothingness. Back into the darkness with you.

 

Through the fading darkness of a new dawn, the triumphant Elf strode down the forested hillside and into the valley below, where she had left the vanguard of her exiled people behind. Approaching the area in which she knew them to be residing, Irrin was not surprised to see them stood waiting for her, in their nervous dozens and hundreds. Audible relief overtook that the moment she was seen, and they came to her in aid that she didn’t need. “Let us move onto the lake. It requires healing, and will make a good home in turn, for the time being. Do not quail, the abomination is gone.”

[ImCookiie 1909]

Spoiler

Incredible story-telling, once again. Great work, Matt.

 

[Mewliet 451]

Very ebic stuff 👌🏻

[Princedom Of Elvenesse 353]

This has been the High Princes and Annilirs channel and we will catch you on the next one