Tense Relations [Arilistrasz]

[Synaxis]

It had been a human village on the shore of a large lake high in the mountains of northern Redridge, called Highpeak by the residents. It was a quaint little village tucked away from the main roads through Redridge, and as a result it rarely saw travelers. The residents were eager to welcome strangers on the rare occasion they did stop by to rest before continuing to travel, and those that lived or visited there could hardly ask for a more tranquil place to live. The lake along whose shore they lived provided them with plenty of fish and water - for it is a freshwater lake - and the woods surrounding the village was the habitat of numerous herds of deer and wild boar. Life here was good, and the inhabitants were happy.

But then the strangers came. They arrived in a crowd of deep plum robes and metal staves and hoods pulled low over their heads. It was near twilight when they arrived at the village, approaching as casually as any ordinary traveler might, except with an excessive coolness and with what amounted to a small army and the supplies to maintain such. Having never been approached by such a large, suspicious looking party before, the village's strongest and most clever men went to the village center to meet the company of strangers. Words were exchanged. The leader of the strangers made an offer to the men that had greeted them: join us and be rewarded in ways you cannot imagine, in exchange for your loyal service. The men, unwilling to give up their freedom and the lifestyle they had maintained for generations, elected to damn their whole village rather than join the band of cultists that had shown up at their doorstep.

And so, the cultists methodically began killing the villagers and burning buildings they did not need or felt stood in the way. With only a few larger structures remaining - an inn, the city hall, a church - they erected tents and set to work extracting what they could from the land. Their dark magic split and decayed the ground beneath their new camp, causing a rift to rise and form at the very center of the village. The grass died and blackened, the trees withered and fell over, and the lake became cloudy and murky from the effects of the magic the cultists used to draw from the earth what resources they needed. They stayed in the area for not even a full day before packing up and moving on, leaving in their wake a blackened swath of land nearly twice the size of the original village.

The lake's waters had turned a misty gray, and what looked like hundreds - nay, thousands - of dead fish rose to the surface of it. The forests that had once provided shelter to local wildlife stood bare and empty, with the trees closest to the village flattened and those further away simply blacked and stripped of their leaves. It was simply as though the entire area had died and begun to decay, with the remaining buildings showing advanced signs of abandonment though their natural inhabitants had only been dead for less than a day. Their bodies had not been moved from where they were struck down; those that had died in the streets had remained there save when they were in the way of the cultists. It was an incredibly eerie sight.

----

Variastrasza had been not far off while all of this was going on. The ancient wyrm had spent a couple days observing Blackrock Mountain and the activities going on around it. Though said activities had decreased dramatically in recent days, there was still vague occupation of those loyal to the black dragonflight - and indeed, occasionally she noted black dragons on the wing in the area. It was not two hours after the cultists had left the village of Highpeak that the emberwyrm herself had launched into flight again herself, though before she could get to the safety of the smoky clouds overhead she was set upon by an excessively ambitious pair of black drakes. Sudden surprise and alarm jerked Varia out of an otherwise peaceful train of thought, and the feeling of claws latching onto her hipbones and ribs made her rear back in surprise, nearly knocking herself out of the air - but successfully dislodging the female drake clawing at her hip.

The drakes were young.. When Varia managed to set eyes upon them, she was able to see that they weren't yet nearing adulthood - they were the draconic equivalent of young teenagers.. Highly impressionable, but completely corrupted. Deep, deep, deep in the red wyrm's metaphorical heart (for she physically lacked one these days), she felt pity for them - she could remember how the black dragonflight was before the madness, she could remember blacks that she'd even dared to consider a friend. To see their young offspring both so foolish and so mad hurt a twinge - but she knew better. The drakes were not going to grow out of the insanity. They were not going to mature and realize they were wrong. They were going to grow into adulthood knowing the same madness that ruined the black Aspect. Though taking the life of such younglings pained her, it had to be done.

They were no match: with no combat expertise and a significant size disadvantage, Varia had finished the pair off in no more than a minute and a half, leaving them to crumple to the blackened earth, where she set their corpses ablaze with fire that quickly corroded their scales. Turning from their corpses, Variastrasza again took to the wing and successfully made it to the clouds without harassment. From here she flew south, and almost immediately upon leaving the blackened Steppes behind, she felt something.. wrong. The air was much too thick, when it shouldn't be. It was far too warm. It crackled with energy - with magic. Dark magic. Corrupt magic.

Poking her head beneath the clouds and peering down at the land which she flew over, Variastrasza was able to at once pick out the blackened stretch of land that the cultists had vacated only hours before. Some of the buildings continued to smolder and the rift where the village center had been spewed a mixture of thick black smoke and vile sulfuric fumes; she could see no movement at the site, no activity, no nothing.. It appeared deserted. She was certain that the Twilight settlement had not been there last she'd been in this area, and judging by the smoldering ruins but utter lack of Twilight tents or activity, it was recent, but they were gone. Unable to resist, the emberwyrm folded her expansive wings to her sides and dropped from the clouds like a rock, only to reopen them just in time to make a landing soft enough to not break her feet. Once settled, the dragon took a quick glance about and stepped forward, maintaining her native form, just in case - these bastards are sneaky, if they were around and feeling aggressive, Varia wanted to be able to just get up and go. Or kill them, one or the other.

Only once she had determined that there were, in fact, no cultists in what remained of Highpeak, she shifted out of her dragon form and assumed a rather unassuming guise of a pale-skinned high elven warrior lady. Though she had determined there were no cultists in the immediate area, she had not noticed whether or not there was anyone else around.. So for all she knew, there could've been somebody hiding somewhere nearby upon her arrival, there could be somebody hiding nearby at this very moment - this very moment she seized to poke through the smoldering ruins of an old home.

[The Madgod]

It was a day like many others; cloudy, yet warm over the Redridge Mountains. A great red leviathan flew below the clouds, looking down on the peaceful beauty of the mountainside. The smile that was on his face abruptly vanished and was replaced with a furrowed brow and a slight frown. There was something amiss. Flying closer to the disturbance, he could see blackened ground, dead trees, and could smell burnt houses and corpses. Though calm, he felt twin twinges of pity and anger; pity at the innocent, and anger at those who did this.

He stopped flying, choosing to hover in place has he concentrated. He found a place on the ground that was suitable, and flew into the sky. Then, in mid-air, he transformed into one of his mortal forms, that of Arlon the human, and in quick sequence cast a spell of slow-fall and a spell of teleportation. Instantly, he felt the hard ground beneath him, slightly jarred from the fall. Looking around, he confirmed his suspicions. This was the work of the Twilight's Hammer cult. Hoping to find some survivors, he headed for the town hall.

[Synaxis]

Varia was not at all hidden while sifting through the rubble of one of the demolished homes. There was hardly anything left to the structure of the building which left her pretty well exposed to anyone's view in or above the village. She wasn't really thinking about that now though, as she had pretty much decided to this point that she was the only one in the village (for now!) and there were no survivors - if there were, they were going to die shortly. The absolute absence of souls from her mental radar told her this; all was dark, there were no lights, not even dim, weak ones - not even a grievously injured villager on death's doorstep. She knew this and so rather than searching for survivors, she looked for the bodies of the fallen, but found none in the building in which she was moving through.

"Bastards," she muttered with a scowl, stepping out of the remnants of the house with an almighty clanking of heavily battle-worn plates. Moving on to the next smoldering foundation, she stopped only briefly when something happened. Deep, deep in the caverns of her mind, there came a light - a very lively light. It was sudden, this appearing soul humming at the edge of her conscience, and assuming one of the villagers had not simply come back to life (for that would be absurd!) she turned and looked about to find the owner of this brightly-lit soul. The flapping of wings was unmistakable. moving to hide behind a barely-standing pillar holding up half a wall in the home she was searching, she poked her head out from behind it just far enough to see what appeared to be a human mage drop to the ground from above. Mages do not ordinarily fly on their own wings, nor did she see a flying mount anywhere nearby. That, and his soul was far, far too aged to be a simple human mage.

She watched him disappear into the town hall and then stepped out from behind the pillar without a second thought. So what. Varia had a suspicion she knew what his deal was but decided not to call for his attention - after all, she was certain he'd see through her guise anyway. It isn't like she really put much effort into it; if anyone wanted to fight she'd just shift to her native form and scare them off anyway. Still, though, she wanted to avoid the trouble - and so she searched on, managing to find the charred body of a young boy, perhaps no older than eight or nine. The corners of Varia's high elven lips tightened uncomfortably and she knelt beside the dead boy, resting one of her cool hands on his sooty forehead, turning his face so she could see it better. He had been a good-looking young boy.

"It is always the fresh face of youth that best represents life itself," she murmured softly, allowing the boy's head to loll back to the side, leaving him in the exact position she'd found him. She would not disturb him - it was not her place to make for him a grave or funeral pyre. With a sympathetic sigh, she moved through the rest of the house and discovered the boy's mother not far away - she was buried under a hefty pile of rubble that Varia did not feel compelled to move, so with another sigh, she turned and stepped out of the house, toward the village's center and the massive tear in the ground, around which the Twilight cultists had built their temporary settlement.