by Vanidor » Sat Sep 30, 2006 6:46 am
OOC Note: This will take place the night of Sunday, the 1st
It had been a pair of weeks since the gargoyle had made his presence known to the girl, Agnieszka. A pair of weeks as he brooded and planned the opening movement of his campaign of fire. His own, small, burning crusade. Kerrak smiled, now, and surveyed the building that lay across from this old storehouse. It partially amused him that his immolation of poor Wystan had gone unnoticed, yet there were many things he had never told young Karolinger. Many secrets that, despite it all, were still locked up solid and tight within his skull.
Even the mindflayers had failed to crack that particular nugget of information. They had shattered his will and invaded his mind, but not before certain other more arcane defenses had been put into place. Sadly, he could not remember all of the information either. It was like a giant hole had been bored into his memory, it was discomforting, but the information could be done without. All that mattered was the need to cleanse the corruption and filth that currently settled within the province. And the root of it was there. There at the Meeting House. The creature smiled once again.
He settled his heart, slowed his breathing. Slowly drew upon his will and focused upon the nothingness of the void. Eyes closed. He felt the prick of the splinter in his fingertip, the pain in his heel. The old ache of an injury to his side, where ribs had been bruised and had never really healed properly. He felt it all, that and the filth and corruption of the source that flowed through him. He felt sick. He felt alive.
The doorway before him suddenly burst open, a roar of splinters and gouting flames. Townsfolk (the few who dared walk openly so late in the night) stared at the sudden detonation. The wood gored a guardsman and left his partner crying in pain, a foot of wood lodged in her stomach. He strode out of the smoke and ashy aftermath, even as dust and debris started to rain to earth. Heavy iron boots carried him forwards, pain settled upon the void like dust on cloth. Inorexiably he moved for the Meeting House.
At the steps the usual patrol of Brotherhood soldiers looked on in shock. Their sergant cried out, and the men and women came to their senses. Six grabbed their long pikes and rushed down the stairs. The other four started to unlimber bows, setting steel-headed arrows to strings. The officer cried out again, yelling to someone inside. Behind his gargoyle-mask, he grimaced. Fought with himself for a space of seconds, seconds that seemed like hours.
These were his comrades, brothers and sisters in arms... But no. NO. They were corrupted by the insidious nature of this place. By Giscard and the rest of the Council. They were unclean. It saddened him, almost to the point of weeping. They had been good and upstanding, and courageous soldiers. That they had to die... Well, at least it would be at -his- cleansing hand. He would wash away their sins with the righteous heat of his fire. And so his hand rose, fingers splayed out in an array before him.
"Be absolved of the sin you carry within your breast, by the cleansing nature of my fires!" And in a wide swath before him, the fires danced. It was something he had never tried before, but that was before his mind was shattered. Before the voices spoke to him in greater multitude and whispered ways to overcome his... limits. A wave of flame, that sheeted out a good fifteen feet wide and cut directly acrost the makeshift phalanx that had formed before him. The flames curled 'round the bodies of his former comrades, catching them in the sudden gout. There were screams. Cries of the damned, of the suffering. The screaming died soon enough, even as he strode past their smoldering remains, savouring the stench of broiled flesh.
At the doorway the remaining five stood stock still, fear coursing up and down their bodies. Veterans all of them were, but that... They remained in their position until a whorl of flame and wind caught them up and tore their bodies into pieces, limbs aflame and being tossed in all directions. The man laughed deeply, then strode through the gore and viscera to step into the building itself.
He dregged up from his memory something Nils had taught him. How to bind the energies of the world into place, if for a short time, and let them unravel themselves after that time was up. He warned that it could be dangerous, as too much unleashed too quickly could be... disasterous. Not only to himself, but to the people and objects around him. It would be dangerous. That garoyle-mask laughed once again, dark and sinister. Someone came out of the main conference room, a spear held upward at an angle. A twist of his head, then a crunching sound. The spear pierced his torso and made him catch his breath.
For a space of seconds the two men gazed at one another. The man with the spear gasped, a brief moment of recognition at the eyes that hid behind the silver and iron mask. And then his face was melted by a venemously green burst of flames. The spear would be ripped free, a hand placed against the slow seep of blood that drizzled from his side. A long breath, and then he set about his work. It would be quick enough, considering. Nils (yes, even Nils) would have called this foolhardy and reckless.
He called it cleansing the province of it's dastards and sins.
Ten minutes after the silver-faced gargoyle burnt the bodies of the guards protecting the meetinghouse, nine after having been stabbed in the side. And four after a hasty command of twenty came to investigate, and find the place empty... The true conflagration occured.
For it was here, then, that the release had come. Fire and Air and Earth that had been bound by strands of Spirit had come apart, bursting into the real world with a sickening fury and roar of anger. A great ring-blossom of fire rose into the air, pieces of the Meeting House spraying in it's heady wake. Fragments and splinters scattered into the night, the debris returning to earth as small flaming comets, doing even more damage to the buildings that surrounded the Council-hall. All the guardsmen inside died, leaving only body parts and bits of weaponry to identify them.
Of the one who caused the conflagration... There was naught but mocking laughter, and the promise of more destruction...
One should always be drunk. That's all that matters... But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk. - Charles Baudelaire