Pirates of the Sorcerean: No Peace on the Rock

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Perry narrows his coal black eyes and gives Fabian a piercing stare.
"..and what makes you think I'll let you walk away with my books?"

 

"Because you're dead, and the only way to make sure your legacy carries on is to take the books back to the land of the living?" Mister Fabian meets Perry's glare evenly. "You're beyond the books. Let them go to others who can use them - or have you've decided that the rest of us aren't worthy of what you learned? Ironic, considering that you accused me of being judgmental..." He breaks off sharply. "No, that's not it at all... What are you trying to hide, Perry?"

 

"HAH! Hahahaha!" He laughs mirthfully as Fabian describes him as dead.
"That was a good one, I might be more humane than I'd expected. As for being judgemental, I have my reasons that extend beyond my own desires. You are right, I don't care for the books, I am merely testing you."
A charming smile crossed the face.

"Stewards are a disease, Fabian. A plague spreading across the world, as long as the host in the magic current survives. You realize the upcoming problems in this, the circle. I hide a vision so terribly that it will shake your faith forever in your Order, and even.. in yourself. I do not hide it from those not worthy, but from those not ready. My place in this, I do not deny, have selfish purposes, but even I will run out of time someday and be a memory. However, I would prefer to be a memory in the kingdom of the living opposite a kingdom of corpses. You seek knowledge, and knowledge like I have you shall find. Not in my books, no, this you will have to discover yourself."

A pause and a sigh.

"A choice awaits you from which, there can be no return."

 

Within her circular prison, Nimue screamed as she felt her connection with magic severed. It was...like being blind. For the first time, she couldn't feel the presence of life around her, and it felt like, in this soundless void, she had ceased to exist. She cried, and beat at the walls, and eventually fell silent. It was obvious that Fabian could not hear her. He could not save her this time. She was glad no one could see her red-rimmed eyes.

So, girl, she thought to herself, on your own. What are you going to do about it? Rubbing her eyes with her sleeve, she fumbles for the white chalk and redraws the lines, circles, and notations in a script older perhaps than living memory, that she had erased in her grief and fury.

Once again she moves to the North position. She stops, and frowns. She remembered Fabian's first lesson: do what you feel is natural. After she had set his coat-tails on fire, he had blanched and said, but not TOO natural. So she moves to the East and begins her invocation there.

Salt spills onto the ground and comes ablaze with the power of her mind, drawing energy from the Ming Fire. Her voice calls out the invocation to the Elementals of the Air.
"Hail, Guardians of the Watchtowers of the East
Powers of Air, Powers of the Mind:
We summon, stir, and call you up;
By the air that is my breath
We are kin, you and I.
Arise and come unto me."

She laughs to herself; the very barrier Perry erected around her was working to conceal her actions. She moves to the South and invokes the Elementals of Fire, does the same to the West with Water, and finishes at the North with Earth.

She lifts Urya Isilme, which blazes brighter than the north star.
"Lady of the Night, Mistress of the Day
Please hear the call of your daughter Nimue
Silver moonlady, watch over me in this circle of power.

"I speak to you who are mother of all beings, I beseech you to lend your hand to your daughter Tanya, who even now is but a lost soul without a body, her vessel animated by an evil spirit.
"Lend her your power and shelter her beneath your love, Lady-Mother. Free her from oppression as you decreed that all we your daughters shall be free.
"I invoke you, Lady, by the power of blood and by the power of the Magic which unites us and keeps us apart, by the power of the Dancer and the Dance."
She concluded with the traditional words of the Goddess to her daughters, although slightly altered:
For your law is love unto all beings. Yours is the secret that opens upon the door of youth and Mine is the cup of wine of life that is the Cauldron of Ceridwen that is the holy grail of immortality.
"You give the knowledge of the spirit eternal and beyond death you give peace and freedom and reunion with those that have gone before.
"Nor do you demand aught of sacrifice, for behold, you am the mother of all things and your love is poured out upon the earth.
"Guide your daughter, for if that which she seeks, she finds not within herself, she will never find it without.
"For behold, you have been with us from the beginning, and you am that which is attained at the end of desire."

She brings her hand down on Isilme's blade and blood drips into the center of the circle, into the center of the white chalk marks which now blaze purple as well as white. The barrier that had enclosed her flickers and fades, and she realizes that she had not needed the Ming Fire after all; she does not need to use her own energy, for a force far greater than herself channels its power through her.

Tanya screamed, and another voice screamed, in a grotesque parody of harmony. Her body slumpsd and a black mist oozed from it, taking the form of a man made of shadows.

"Fabian, now!" screams Nimue as the strange force swirls through her and her consciousness fades. Did I just not read the fine print or is this something that doesn't always happen? she thinks miserably. Figures, the first time I cast a Goddess-invoking ritual, I manage to Draw Down the Moon.

The crew see Nimue change. Much taller now, cloaked in shapes of light, she moves with dancing steps instead of the stride of a hunting cat. Her eyes are an unearthly green as she glides her way towards Tanya's body and lays her hands on the woman's temples.

"Daughter, come home," she sais softly, and her voice is moon-music and starfire.

 

"Attack!"
One of the golden tigers leap upon Fabian, while the other jumps towards Dante with pounding paws.

Far away in subconsciousness, Tanya hears the last she ever will from the dreaded voice in her mind as she feels the ominous presence leave her.
You've felt the proof, and this was no trickery of mine..

"Let's match your powers then! I am the nexus of a thousand souls, and here's a few to spare!"
The shadows of everyone present seemed to form into dark flesh, as a clone of themselves except for being the dark aspect of themselves. The only one without a darker aspect is Fabian.

 

"ALFUS!" Mister Fabian stands fast into the tiger's leap as he shouts the ancient word. The tiger impales itself on a sword of green light extending from Mister Fabian's hand and falls to the ground in a shower of gold coins.

"PRISMATA!" He raises his palm toward Perry, the sword becoming a sheet of white fire that splits into a rainbow-hued ring, imprisoning the shadow being in light.

"Leave them out of it, Perry," he warns. "This is between us, and us alone. Let's settle it now. As you said before, like gentlemen."

***********

Destroy the Circle?

St. John isn't sure he heard correctly. Yes, the Stewards were a plague, but that was only because of the namby-pamby Elders who insisted on that whole bit about "service." Once he and his fellows came forth, there would be no more of that...

He spies the Lorebooks on their pedestal, seemingly forgotten behind Mister Fabian, and begins to skirt the edges of the room towards them.

 

Perry looks upon Fabian with a smirk, "It must be done, Fabian, for the greater cause. But this is our match! Dictum Arcana Mortis!"
With a flash of light, Fabian and Perry disappeared from sight of the struggle in the cave.

***

Fading out of time and existence, Fabian and Perry comes to existence in a huge transparent sphere of a silvery hue floating in a current of rainbow colors. They were in a prison without gravity, surrounding by the force of magic itself.
"Rituals ancient, Fabian, the mage duel. Only one can leave this place if we begind, to the end as you requested. Do you accept this challenge?"

A chuckle left the shadow shape, as he gave Fabian a smug look and without waiting for an answer, "Scared of fate, Cinque?"

 

Nimue does not notice the shadow and her master disappear - which is hardly surprising, since her consciousness has been replaced by something much larger: a collective conscious that is a whole, that is the Mother, both womb and tomb of life. Tanya feels helself being called, drawn like a metal to a magnet, a soul to her own body.

Then the green light from Nimue fades, or rather leaves her body, coalescing into a woman - made of leaves and vines and growing things, yet the epitome of all beauty; and she awakes.

"Will she...be alright?" she asks the Goddess.
"She will, child."
"And you're leaving."
"Never fear to call on me, my daughter. I am always with you."
"It's not over, is it?"
"Is anything ever over?" the woman replies. "But do not fear. There is no reason to be afraid."

Nimue steps forward, and the woman embraces her and fades. She is left standing alone in the middle of the Antechamber, and rather than being exhausted she is filled with energy. It is only then that she realizes that Fabian is gone.

Frantically she extends her mind and searches for his aura; but it is gone. Not masked, as it was by the magical object he had found in this room; simply - gone, as if he was no longer on this plane. Then she realizes.

"No one disturb me," she sais curtly, and sits cross-legged on the floor, sending her mind into a full trance pattern - something she has rarely needed to do, because the sheer range of her Othersenses has usually been more than adequate to project herself out of her body.

In her hand she clutches the communications crystal. It cuts into her hand. He is somewhere. Their connection is not severed, but she cannot reach him. So she does the next best thing. She opens herself fully to magic, absorbing the energy around her and feeding it to him as he had done for her during the battle at the ruined temple.

Be strong, she thinks.

 

Mister Fabian gives a small strange smile, a mixture of relief and sorrow and remembrances and resignation and confidence.

"Only a fool fears the inevitable, Perry," he says, then drops into the arcane tongue to speak forms of the ritual duel. Preliminaries complete, he waits for Perry's attack.

 

Dante ducked beneath the lion, causing it to crash into Meatloaf. Before it can sink it's teeth into him though, Dante leaps upon its back and sinks his sabre down with all its force through its head. "Meatloaf? You okay?" apart from the dead lion, and Dante's extra weight, he seemed okay.

 

Standing in free air, the two mages one another from twenty paces distance. Raising an outstretched hand toward Fabian, Perry's voice is but a whisper filled with anticipation, "Préts?"

A smile crossed Fabian lips, and he responded with a loud clear shout, "Allez!"

"Firum Ralis!"
A whirling spiralling inferno was unleashed from Perry's palm, raging across the sphere towards Fabian.

***

Upon the cavern floor, Tanya slowly opened her eyes. The stone was dreadfully cold, and she ached throughout her body, yet.. it was her body once again. Sitting up, she tried to overview the current situation.
In a low cough, she gestures a shaking open hand at Nimue, and whispers in a rhaspy voice "..d..dagger.."

[ November 13, 2003, 14:46: Message edited by: Lokken ]

 

Mister Fabian opens himself to the sea of his power and raises a wall of water before him. The firestorm strikes it in a great explosion of steam but is eventually quenched, and the clouds of steam coalesce and rain their power gently back over the sea. A wave washes towards Perry as the wall of water dissipates.

*********

St. John is halfway to the Lorebooks' pedestal when Mister Fabian and Perry vanish. He dashes forward in the ensuing chaos.

 

Nimue feels herself torn out of the trance by Tanya's feeble voice. Fabian, I know you don't need me...but others do, she thinks, and moves over to where the woman is lying on the floor. She holds Tanya's hands in hers and pours energy into her, willing her to live.

"Dagger?" She asks sharply amidst the chaos. "Don't get any funny ideas. And...welcome back to us."

 

"Some trust.. *cough* No time.."
As she feels her energy restored, she remembers.. remembers all of it. She nearly dare not try it, but closes her eyes and mutters under her breath, "Kvin Ekreom.."

As she opens her eyes, the nearby shadows crawl into her hand and forms into a dark dagger. Blinking as she looks at it, she snaps herself out of it using only a split second to aim, then flings it through the air. A groan can be heard throughout the cave as the dagger bite its way into St John's thigh.

 

"Oh, I trust you with my life. But you look to be feeling rather badly right now...so I'm not sure I trust you with yours....." she trails off in amazement, "What the HELL did you do? Tanya...?" she laughs softly. "Well, you certainly don't have a reason to hate spellcasters anymore!"

 

St. John feels the shadow spread throughout his body like poison but continues stumbling towards the pedestal. His limbs are heavy with ice as he takes the Lorebooks into his arms and turns to cross the battle-filled cavern. Blackness swims before his vision but he focuses on the tunnel that leads to freedom and begins to limp across the room, burdened by the heavy volumes.

 

Tanya looks at Nimue, trying to summon a slight smile. Not succeeding, she sighs.
"The memories remain, all of Perry's achievements.. and cruelties. They came like a flood into my own, why do you think he knew so much about you? He could see my memories too.."

As Nimue mentions spellcasters, Tanya looks away with a darkened face.
"I don't know, Nimue.. I just don't know."

 

Nimue sees the haunted look on Tanya's face, and recognizes it all too well from her own experience. She hugs Tanya, although she is unfamiliar with physical contact - Fabian was never too open with his affection, although they both knew it was there.

"Tanya, you've been given a gift. I told you once, and I'll tell you as many times as you need to hear it: power is only as evil as the hand that wields it.

"I think you've proven amply that you are not seduced by power; no matter what Perry may have told you, you did not work with him, you were a victim. If you did not want him defeated, did not want his soul out of your body - it would never have left.

"Would you cut off your hands, Tanya? They are only an extension of your will. Thus it is with magic. It is the person themself that determines whether power is used for good or evil.

"For what it's worth, you have my full support. I know what it's like to find these things creeping into your mind, and I'm afraid you have to learn some degree of self-control...in magic, as with one's physical body, there are automatic reflexes.

"Once we get back on the Ariel, I'm going to tell you exactly what Fabian and I are dealing with. Fabian and I have kept it on a need-to-know basis, so as not to alarm people and cause unjust hatred, but I think the cat's out of the bag. You should know about the Circle."

 

Tanya rests her head on Nimue's shoulder and whispers lowly, "Power.. what is power.."

She rises slowly and look toward the exit through which St. John went.
"The circle.. he wanted them dead. What unjust hatred are you speaking of?"

 

"I am afraid that Stewards will be hated for what the Circle is. The Circle of the Abyss Serpent...believes that if you have power over another, you have the right to use it. That those of us who can touch magic should control those who do not...simply because we have an extra pair of 'hands', so to speak.

"The Circle is opposed to the Stewards' Oath, which states that Stewards serve the sea and all those who sail on it. Some of the Circle members are Stewards. All keep their affiliation secret. And every one of them wants to destroy the Order and use their power to rule."

She cracks a smile, "Don't you HATE idiots with world domination plans?"