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A RECKONING


TreeSmoothie
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[Just some funny writing to document character progression and their reaction to some lore changes.]

 

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       Viktoriya awoke in her abode-of-the-week, some dark, overgrown cave always eerily quiet - abandoned, she guessed. "The rain is awfully noisy today, isn't it?" With a heave, she shrugged off the pelt atop her and clambered to her feet, book in hand and a bundle in the other as she gathered all of her belongings. Another day, another dozen hours of aimlessly wandering, her eyes eager for unseen sights and her brain ever hungry for knowledge. Scrambling atop her horse, she set off, coming across a little woodland town built upon stilts. Abandoned, just like every other settlement beforehand. "Some good loot, hopefully, to  make up for it being barren. Ain' t'at right, horsey?"

 

     As she scoured the village for supplies, she came across a lift inside of an old, hollow birch tree. As she descended, the sudden red glow of flame and the horrid stench of brimstone caught her eyes; an unexpected sight. "A sign!" that maleficar chortled, tugging her two hounds along. "Vyr both meagre little things, but surely still a fair sacrifice. Nothing compared to a Descendant - but ... Ah. Why am I worried? One will do, one will do. Drazhana ... Perhaps - a lesser of her's, they've never complained. What a silly thought."

 

    She took her dagger in one hand and began to form a pentacle upon the grotesque red floor, she knew it by heart, save for the odd writing upon it. The air split as she began to chant and her canine companion restrained on the floor whimpered - "ADALM-PRALITU'SEK!"

   The woman began to carve out a symbol into it's flesh, her cracked lips stretched wide into a grin. "ODOL'NUZK! O'ZILTAK!"

 

   As she drove the knife into its throat, she expected the burst of malflame to greet her, to turn that poor creature to dust. But as its shrieks and cries died out, and it convulsed before sitting dead at the center of the pentacle, her smirk died. She parted its fur, checking to see if she'd done the sigil right - or had she been careless in making the pentacle itself? Surely, she made a mistake somewhere. And so, she did it again with her second hound. Nothing happened. The woman desperately kicked aside the cadaver, hoping to see even a drop of inky Rakir, but all that was left on the bloodied floor was witchtallow and ichor. 

 

"Yam ... Doing something wrong here, I know it. Nothing to fret over," that woman hummed, and fetched a roll of cactus green from her bag to light and press against her lips and chattering teeth. "I just need to calm down." Before she knew it, the entire roll - paper, herbs, and all, had been reduced to ash littering the floor. The walls moved, the fleshy ground pulsed, her skin crawled. One of her hounds turned to look at her as madness set in, its maw agape as oil seeped from its jowls and its eyes rolled back and fizzled away. "A-ah . . . How much did I smoke?"

 

 

 

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"You've failed me, Viktoriya."

There was no response. She knew this was just another hallucination, something that would pass.

"How many Lords have you pleaded to? Sworn to?"

Perhaps, she thought, she could pass the time by talking to it. Technically, herself.

"Not many."

 

 

The corpse twitched and shifted, suddenly in the form of some crude, blobby demon with mucousy bat's wings.

"Who is this?"

" . . . Tichar."

 

It shifted, again - this form entirely different, appearing as some old, aged Orc with a quill. She couldn't recognize it, but, in this context ...

"Dlimbok."

 

Again. It became taller, though still an Orc. An Orcess, rather, dripping with inky blood.

"Enrohk."

 

Again. It slimmed, some elven man with short hair and a blade.

" . . . 's that Mika? He ain' a patron, as far as-"

 

She didn't have time to speak. Its head twisted and its neck bent gruesomely like a snake lunging for prey, its head ugly and draconic. 

"... Asioth."

 

After the answer, it at last became more humanoid; a tall woman, almost unfamiliar but still lingering at the back of her memoires.

"Ymir."

 

Its figure convulsed and began to rapidly churn and flicker between many different men, clad in armor and red cloth, who held swords and sometimes scepters, who wore metal caps or golden crowns.

"The army? Orenia? What are you trying to prove?"

 

At last, that hateful thing's body turned in upon itself, oil sizzling away to become mist, their chest parting into odd metal scraps, and a haunting scowl. 

"Don't you recall pledging to the Barrow, your life? Hadn't your past Lords deemed you unworthy, and stripped you of everything? Why is it you still live?"

 

The woman let out a shriek, at last, as she saw it take the form of that Wight who'd cast her into this shell of herself - powerless, small, unworthy. She remembered it all, falling, falling, into the depths, her soul splitting, her head reeling, and that awful pain and the piercing gaze of a student who would replace her quickly on the hierarchy of shepards. Treachery, confusion. 

"Why do you pledge to so many? Do you not fear what you cannot comprehend? Do you only seek power? Fame? Is nothing of consequence, even death?"

 

Viktoriya had backed away, now, weeping and clutching at her eyes as though if she tore them out now the horrid hallucination would end. For the first time in decades, she -- the demon of Helena, the hellrazer, the captain, felt fear.  She could no longer reason with herself that it was merely a mirage, a result of her addictions, she certainly couldn't be in the wrong! And as she tried to flee for the lift, her foot slipped and she was sent tumbling to the ground, knocked out cold amidst a puddle of hound's blood and flesh, to be tormented by her own mind even in slumber. Voices barraged her, pleading, commanding, asking, ordering. Impish figures danced in the corners of her vision yet disappeared when she looked and no matter the nightmare, she always died and continued the same gruesome cycle of running without retaliation. And when she finally awoke, sober, the voices followed. She needed something to rid this plague upon her mind, and instantly, she thought back to her infernal ritual. The hound's corpses still sat there yet decomposing, no oil nor rakir or ooze in sight to suggest her hallucinations had been real, though she still believed them.

 

"Glorify us," a whisper hissed in her ear, echoing throughout the cave as though its speaker were right beside her.

                                                 "Tell the tale,"                                       "The end draws nigh!"

           "Sacrifice,"                                                 "Give us more!"

 

And so she did. Walled away back in her abode of Lubba Keep, she prepared her magnum opus - a true testament to her dedication. To stave away her doubt, to wade off her dread, a call to action for the likeminded. Soon it would be done, she told herself, and all would be right again.

Ancient Mysteries Blog: Devil's Bible Codex Gigas

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