To Black Blood's Heart (Quills/Sam)

[Lion]

Thank the gods!  This set up was getting much better already.  "Smart," was all he muttered as he moved further from the light pouring in through the door.  True, he couldn't see a damn thing and the body suddenly seemed twice as heavy than it ordinarily was.  Now he could do what he needed to do without interruptions.  He just wished that he own guards would do that same thing when he wanted his utmost privacy.  But that's not what they were paid to do.  Imagine a guard paid to leave alone the very person they were trained to defend; now that would be quite a proposal to think about.

He was confident he could do this alone, no matter what lurked in the shadows.  There was nothing to fear here, nothing that was reasonably fearful, he felt.  Fear was only most potent when it struck, and such was his own policy.  He did some of the craziest things because all that he feared never came to pass.  Fear was in the future, never arriving.  No matter what such an ominous building have to offer, as long as he was prepared, there would be nothing to fear from here.  He'd done things like this before, but he was ever ready for any unexpected change.  He had to learn the hard way to never put his guard down.

Leading down from the entrance, was another set of steps that spread out down a narrow hall.  As he stepped further and further down into the depths, there was no doubt now as to the possibility of this temple being far bigger than he'd initially imagined.  And that was because, though it was hardly impressive above ground, it sprawled out underground for miles.  He was beginning to see now that this may take a lot longer than he wanted.  But there was still the matter of resurrecting the body and figuring out what had happened here.

When he felt he'd reached the staircase landing, Neodoryx paused for a bit before igniting his hand with electricity.  The light blue glow emanating from it created a field far enough that he finally was able to see the walls of the what seemed to be the temple's antechamber, a squared in the front, rounded off in the back room that spread out evenly on both sides.  There was a door to a passage way on every wall with the exception of the rounded off one to the back.  The chamber doors, like the one to the outside, were so oddly shaped that it was a wonder how the stone used to craft them were ever cut to fit into them.  Furthermore, Neodoryx wondered about the carvings dug into the doors, knowing not if they were just decorations or if they actually symbolized something.  He was leaning toward the latter, but deciding it best to decipher them at a later date.

The antechamber was large and doubly uninviting.  He wondered if he slammed the body on the ground just how crazy the acoustics would be in here.  There was no doubt the clang of the armor would bounce off the walls and make his presence known far better than scouting would.  Of course, that was just plain stupid.

At the center of the chamber, lay an enormous circular slab of stone, as black as the floor around him.  Stepping towards it, Neodoryx saw several unlit torches hanging on the sides of the walls.  Rapidly, he sent out three small balls of electricity, each one lighting three torches before bouncing off the walls and lighting the rest.  They honed in like accurate arrow shots before returning back to him.  The room was now alit with the burning torches, leaving him to extinguish the light from his hand.  It was now that he dropped the corpse on the slab and would begin his work in reviving him.  Whatever this man Asteril had to say, he would finally give him that chance.

[Anonymous]

Kiru would've given a lot for a longbow.  Almost surely outnumbered, on uncertain terrain?  If only.  He'd left his bow back and camp and returned to find it gone, along with the rest of their weapons.  That meant these raiders might have them, but then again, it meant they probably had something worse.

Ha.  He didn't feel panicked, though his heart had started to beat faster, a nearly audible shift that came with tension, like the mechanism catching in a gun.  He squinted side to side, taking stock.

The fellow stumbling toward them looked dazed and ill-tempered and dumb as a rock.  He'd put away his sling, so he wasn't a threat.  Let Cabhadden handle him.  Even she should be able to do that.  Kiru, now, knew better than to pay attention to the man in the open.  He took a careful step back, into the shelter of the tall black rock, and scanned the area to his right through the frame of his lashes.  One, aiming a bow through a window.  One of theirs?  Couldn't be sure, but he saw the glint of metal.  Another on the roof.  Another behind a crumbling section of wall... no, two more.  Four.  Kiru nodded to himself.  

"Ho, stranger!" he said at last, amiably enough, kicking himself forward from the rock.  He put up his left hand, complete with crossbow, cocking it rakishly toward the sky.  A gesture of peace.  Slowly, carefully, he reached behind him, freed his helmet, and tossed it to the ground.  He tugged his shield free from its place over his pack and held it loosely at arm's length, as though preparing to drop it.  

"Han't seen a troop wearin' our colors, have you?" Kiru called, catching Tayr's eye for just a moment.  The little raider stumbled to a halt and looked puzzled for a half-second.  He glanced back over his shoulder.

It had been the right question to ask.  He'd thought that if they had something to do with whatever'd happened they'd react quick.  If not they might pause, thinking there was a troop about.  

They didn't pause.  Kiru had just enough time to whip his shield up, not in the direction of the little raider but toward the four he'd spotted before.  Something hit it, an arrow by the sound, and Kiru took two running steps back to the shelter of the rock, aiming his crossbow over his shield.  He loosed a bolt; it disappeared into the window where he'd spotted the archer earlier.  Hit or miss, he couldn't tell.  He slid another bolt into the bow, sheltering himself beneath his shield.  This time it was easier.  He stood in the shadow of the rock, sheltered by another fallen stone.  His first bolt had missed, he saw now, but he loosed another and caught one of the raiders who'd been perched on the tumbledown staircase. Kiru heard his wet choking.

He'd just turned to spare a glance back at Tayr--idiot cunt she might be, but she was his soldier--when something big hit him sideways, knocking his shield aside.  He went sprawling.  

Shit.  There were five.  He didn't waste time grappling with the raider who'd landed on top of him.  Long, dirty nails raked at his face, and he caught a glimpse of tangled hair and something metal, and then he had to squeeze his eyes shut to keep them--had his knife out--stabbed at the outlaw's gut, low in his reach, where it wasn't expected--and ripped the knife upward--

[Anonymous]

[OOC: Long post is looooooong. Fight scenes are hard but I really got into it. ^^]

When Kiru caught her eye and asked that perfect question, Tayr swallowed hard and really, fervently, more than she ever had in her life, wished him wrong. But of course he wasn't. It would be too much to ask for luck to be on their side today.

She started after the poor little runner; the two of them were outnumbered enough without him possibly fetching more raiders after them. However, it turned out she didn't have much choice in the matter. As Kiru was otherwise occupied, the two men in the hut had taken the opportunity to go after her together. She found herself borne down upon by a huge man with a club and a less huge sword-wielder.

The first of the two to get within range was the sword-wielder, who she jabbed at to keep him at bay. While she was doing this, however, the club-wielder had gotten close enough to take aim. She stamped hard on his shin and as he stumbled he clubbed her in the knee for her trouble. The man with the sword was up close now too. She deftly changed her grip and bashed him in the chin with the shaft of her glaive. He reeled back. She turned to take care of the man with the club, who was  launching another attack. She changed her grip again and swept her glaive low, tripping him. Now she gritted her teeth as she took two injuries at once. The man with the sword had recovered more quickly than she had anticipated, and dashed behind her. As she had moved to trip the man with the club, an archer had shot at her. It had very narrowly missed her neck, scoring a deep gash in her shoulder and...

Burying itself in the sword-wielder's eye.

What was that about luck again?

The man had been trying to stab her when he went down, and as he crumpled his sword made a shallow cut in the back of her thigh. She quickly calculated that without something to protect her from more arrows, she'd likely not survive much longer. She aimed a quick kick at the club-wielder to keep him on the floor a little longer, but the knee injury from earlier in the fight was worse than she thought and she went down too.

She pushed herself up with the butt of her glaive, grabbing the collar of the sword-wielder's shirt as she did so. She heaved him up, supporting the weight on her left shoulder and hip. The man with the club was up now too, but with only one opponent she would be much more effective. She backstepped as quickly as she could with her knee injury and macabre makeshift shield, to put some space between the two of them. At his first rush, she steeled herself and speared him through the throat. He survived just long enough to club her heavily in the ribs and down they both went.

She lay on the floor for a moment, winded and gasping. She pulled herself together and got unsteadily to her feet, keeping the corpse between her and the archers at all times. It already had an extra two arrows in it. With some difficulty, she retrieved her weapon from the second body.

Now she turned to see how her companion was faring. She couldn't see him at first, but soon spotted the brawl on the ground back by the rock. She hurried over, limping heavily in her left leg, to see if she could help. When she arrived the top body had stopped twitching. She nudged it with the toe of her left boot, then gave a harder push, wincing at the pain in her knee.

'All good here, Sarge?' she enquired, scanning the landscape from behind the corpse. She couldn't see where anyone else was and she hadn't been shot at in a little while. It was worrying.

What were they up to now?

[Lion]

It was as if the stone slab in the middle was causing the body to roast altogether though there were no physical signs of such that he could see.  Instead the smell of putrid rotting flesh filled the antechamber.  Over the course of time, he'd grown used to it, but not even that made the stench anymore pleasant.  Working with the dead, like being an embalmer, was an acquired habit.  And one Neodoryx had only recently been interested in.  He wasn't an expert necromancer, but the skills he had developed would make due for the moment.

Neodoryx had already begun his work, pouring a salve into the crevice of the body's disastrously disfigured face, a salve that he had mixed together beforehand and had stored in a fold in his armor where it was easily concealed.  The salve itself consisted of a number of herbs rare to the lands of Darken Vei but had salvaged over the course of his travels.  What may have been needless hoarding to others was foresight to him.  There was hardly a worse feeling than of not having something you would need at a given moment.  The substance had no other practical purpose other than to achieve the one goal that might convince the body, once revived, to spill the knowledge of what happened here; knowledge that might even be the key to the temple.

The horrible mutilation of the flesh, of which his sights were quite accustomed to, seemed to be done on purpose.  Nobody fixed their face like this unless there was some purpose to be achieved and whether that purpose was to become an object of terror to his surviving comrades or to keep the body's soul from finding peace even in the afterlife, Neodoryx was sure that what was happening here was beyond normal.  Well, he just hoped that this man would have some of the answers he was searching for.

And now the summoning would commence.  There really wasn't much to it.  Though necromancy indeed was a complex art of magic with a plethora of profanities to be explored throughout, what he was doing was considered by many to be the basic definition of the practice.  He'd already laid out the various tools needed for the ritual and was beginning to chant the words, summoning the spirit of the recently fallen man.

"Enkata ushuk mit e-ntomin'e dolak-ininminishin," he muttered incessantly all the while motioning his hands over the limbs and head of the cadaver, allowing contact to the spirit world, hoping that he was channeling the right spirit.  The last thing he would want to have the wrong spirit in the wrong body.  That would be useless for them on both ends.  As he persisted to chant the words, feeling the pronunciation of them becoming easier and easier with every utterance, he felt his hands suddenly warm and when the final chant came upon him, he did the final step and shot out tendrils of electricity from his hands.

Abruptly the body of Asteril began to glow around his wounds, the minor ones closing and the others sealing as much as possible and ceasing to be a rotting stench, or at least abating what it could.  And when the glow ceased, the body suddenly took in a sharp, deep breath, sucking in air as if it was its very first breath of life, and as if it was necessary at all.  Though the corpse was brought back to life, there was little Neodoryx could do to remind him that he was, in fact, very dead.  Asteril, restored with vitality, gasped and shot his one good eye open, the other socket devoid.  "Good gods!" the revived body exclaimed in a very groggy voice.  "Oi...got me one 'ell of a headache! Gods!"  The corpse held the side of his torn head, obviously missing the spot where a portion of his head was partially caved in.  Rubbing it gently, he tried to sit up and took a second glance at Neodoryx.  "Hey!  Who the hell are you!?"

This was to be expected.  Neodoryx took a step back.  "I woke you up.  And if you don't shut up, I can put you back to sleep, permanently."

"You and what army!?"  the corpse shot back haughtily.

"I don't need an army, Asteril.  I'm Sereth, that's all you need to know.  Now, I just need you to speak when prompted.  Tell me what you remember most recently."

"That's not fair!  And...wait!  How do you know my name?  What the hell does 'Sereth' mean?  What am I doing here?"

"I will answer your questions when you answer mine.  I suggest you start or this will be a very long afternoon."

[Anonymous]

"Course it's not.  Get the hell back," Kiru grunted, shoving the body of his assailant away.  He motioned Tayr toward the leeward shelter of the overhanging black rock.  Just because their attackers had paused didn't mean they were safe.  Not that he'd particularly mind watching Cabhadden get peppered with arrows for her stupidity, but he had no one else on this damn crag.  

Something sticky dripped into one eye, and Kiru paused to swipe his forehead and eyes clean with the bottomside of one sleeve.  His cheek stung in its wake; his attacker had clawed it and gotten in a knife-cut, deep enough to split the scar that already ran down his cheek.  Oh, well.  He looked down and realized blood--not his--had soaked through his jacket and trickled down inside his shirt, too.  Oh well to that, too.  He couldn't fix it now.

He grabbed the dead man by the front of his tunic and dragged him back, into the shelter of the standing stone.  A quick, efficient search turned up a pair of curved, serrated daggers, a small stiletto blade.  On second thought, he'd take the coins he'd found sewn into a false shirt seam.  The man hadn't had a bow.  Kiru cursed under his breath and rolled the body away.  It smelled foul, and when it'd settled face-down, he caught the scent from the spreading pool beneath it.  He'd gotten used to the shit smell of battle, but he still didn't like it.

Tucking his new knives into his belt, he scrambled to put his back to the rock as fast as he could.  As he settled and began to wind his crossbow, he kept one eye on the woman soldier and the other on anyplace he might find their assailants.  Where'd they gone?  

Reinforcements, probably.  

Fuck, Kiru did not want to die like this.  Blowing out a breath, he shrugged out of his pack and pulled out his flint striker, a torch, and six small, thick glass bottles.  He opened one, which wafted out the smell of harsh spirits, and poured a dribble into his palm.  He scrubbed at his face, cleaning the cuts again.  Then he started to make strips of his shirttail, using his knife to worry the fabric loose enough for tearing.  

"So.  Gimme a hand with these," he said at last, soaking the strip of cloth in liquid from the open bottle and stuffing it in another bottle, from which he'd pried the cork.  "There'll be more, I bet you.  If it gets really bad we may have to make a run and get in... there."  Tight-mouthed, he jerked his head toward the temple.

[Anonymous]

[OOC: Sorry for the late reply. Got really busy without warning.

Also for some reason this post is shorter than usual. Sorry about that too. -_-]

Tayr sat heavily against the rock, propping the corpse-shield up next to her. She followed Kiru's lead and picked up the open bottle. She twisted to look at the back of her right thigh, ripped the already ruined fabric a little more and rubbed a small amount of liquid on the long shallow cut there. It wasn't bleeding much, but she'd bet money on the bandits' weapons being filthy.

She took a second bottle and glanced back at the temple. Truth be told, she'd actually much rather be in there right now than out here, no 'if things get bad' about it. She was injured and more poorly armoured than she'd like in the situation. And who knew how many of the enemy would be showing up when they returned?

'To my mind we should scarper now. E'en if they've not got help, there be more o' them than us. I shouldn't like to be 'ere when they pops up again.'

She stuffed a wad of alcohol-soaked cloth tightly into the bottleneck and put it on the ground, before taking a third bottle and wrenching out the cork.

'And besides, that fancy-lookin' feller's in there. We could have 'im use all them magics on someone as isn't us.' She let out one quiet chuckle and set down another readied bottle.