Fantasy Terrorchild: Awakening

[joshuadim]

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[asphodelus]

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[Damian0358]

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[hardcore.munchkin]

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[turtwigwins]

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[K0mori]

1. Free Yourself - You decide you won't be anyone's pet, ever again. Your hate has been building for two entire years, and now, finally, you won't have to wait any longer. You're going to atomize that bitch Diala - and take back the Pandemonium Door while wearing her blood!

As you exit the study, you aren't alone. Embryx is walking toward the dining room and calls out to you: "hey, sorry I took so long, I got held up talking to-" she starts to explain before trailing off. She's fixated on the intensity in your eyes, and the grin tugging at your lips. "...Are you okay?" she asks.

"I'm fine," you reply, "just busy."

"You don't look fine. Stop. What were you doing in the study?" She demands, trying to block your path.

You simply wave your hand, effortlessly sweeping her aside with telekinesis as you walk through. "Just getting in touch with my emotions, sister," you reply with a cold laugh to punctuate it. "Do you want to see me kill Diala?"

"Wh-what? Oh shit..." Embryx sputters as she picks herself off the floor to follow after you.. "Agranne, this isn't going to work, please, you're going to get both of us killed...!"

"It's been two years, Embryx," you say as you reach the foot of the stairs the drow had just descended and with a burst of self-directed telekinetic energy, you launch yourself upward, clearing the entire flight and touching down on the landing. "I'm not wasting another second."

"Agranne!" Embryx shouts up at you as she climbs the stairs two at a time below below. You jam your key into the lock and pop the door open, and Wolgar - Diala's personal guard and doorman - is alerted to your return. Normally, you'd head for your own bedroom at the near end of the hall, but he scarcely has time to process that you're headed for the headmistress's quarters before you reach out and compel him into silence before crushing his heart with compressive telekinesis. Embryx arrives just in time to watch the familiar doorman's ribcage split and spray blood across the floor before he falls, wordlessly, to land flat on his face.

"O- Okay..." she stammers. "Agranne, I know you're in a hell-raising mood right now, b- but I'm not going to help you do this! This isn't... Are you listening to me!?"

"Knock knock~!"

You blast Diala's lock apart with a concentrated magical strike, showering the room beyond with metal fragments as you crash shoulder first into the wood, knocking it open... only to find Diala ready and waiting for you, welding her wand like a dagger.

"Sleep!" she cries out, and before you can respond, you find yourself falling, your world fading out around you.

No... No! This isn't how this is supposed to go!

1. Fight the Compulsion - You can't be undone so easily. You catch yourself mid-collapse and will yourself to keep your eyes open as you locate the Pandemonium Door on Diala's desk. Maybe if you could just pull it closer...

2. Succumb - As your body betrays you, you feel your mind going numb as well. A sense of relief somehow accompanies the dread you feel...

 

[joshuadim]

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[Infab]

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[asphodelus]

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[Breadman]

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[dikdik]

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[hardcore.munchkin]

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[K0mori]

1. Fight the Compulsion - You can't be undone so easily. You catch yourself mid-collapse and will yourself to keep your eyes open as you locate the Pandemonium Door on Diala's desk. Maybe if you could just pull it closer...

You lift your heavy, numbing arms toward Diala and the object you seek, single-mindedly resisting the urge to close your eyes and rest until, incredibly, you begin driving the elder sister back. Shadowy haze erupts from the tip of her wand as she senses your raw power once more, but this time, it's more refined and less wasteful. This time, you have a chance, and that's all it will take to motivate you toward this one, decisive act. Your hands refilled with sensation as Diala's hex fails, you recommit to pulling the Pandemonium Door into the air.

But at that moment, Diala turns and catches it as it flies by, spinning to a stop with a flutter in her cloak. "You-" she spits, but you don't wait for the tongue lashing to begin. Instead, you shatter every piece of glass in the room with a thought and then contract it towards her position. Like a hundred little daggers they fly at her from every angle, and she deftly turns and drives her magic against it to nullify the shards in mid-air. However graceful her defense, however, some of the crystalline blades cut through and slash her, causing her to scream - more so in indignation than pain.

"You urchin. How DARE you!" she howls, using both compulsion and telekinesis to keep you rooted in place before blasting you multiple times with raw magic, tearing your flesh like stab wounds. "Does the Eldest's design mean nothing to you!? Do you covet my power so badly that you would defy the sisterhood between us all!?"

Embryx cuts in, having moved into the room behind you. "She's not of her right mind!" the drow shouts back, and you look up against the incredible weight of Diala's bottomless magic to catch a glimpse Embryx brandishing her morning star - looming over you like an executioner. But she isn't ending this, even though she could easily kill you with a heavy swing and be done with it. "She came out from the study in a blind rage-"

"Stay your tongue, you waste of anima! I know you two have been plotting against me."

All at once, you remember Diala's ability to read your mind, and realize she must be doing it right now. If she's been doing it this entire time, it's no wonder you were able to overpower her for the briefest moment - she was distracted by your thoughts! And now, Embryx is inviting herself to be examined from the inside out, as well. Idiot... She should have stayed away.

Diala snickers, wiping the blood off her cheek with her sleeve as she recalls Embryx's treachery through your mind's eye. "I know about you, drow. '...You'd kill her if you could, though, right?' That's what you said." she taunts. "When I'm done with Agranne, I'll do to you what she did to Wolgar, and then I'll make blood sausages from your humors and feed your fucking bones to the pigs!"

You hear Embryx cry out in a desperate manner, and feel the pressure on your body release. On what is undoubtedly your last chance, you spring off the floor with your natural tabaxi ability and unleash a powerful magical strike - a lockbreaker - and watch as it blows a hole clean through Diala's stomach. Embryx's morning star, suspended at that moment in the air between them with the spiked end toward the elder, falls to the floor with a powerful thump that splinters the floorboards. Embryx dashes forward at the same moment and scoops the handle of her weapon off the floor, turning it round in a high-arching hammer blow, which Diala can only barely catch with her wand pointed skyward.

At last, the elder sister's magic is fully lifted from you, and with a telekinetic pull, you rip the Pandemonium Door from Diala's off hand so that it lands firmly in your own. Your pneuma fully refreshed, a gleeful grin rips through your lips as your magic lifts Diala from the ground and propels her upward, closing the space between her and the spiked ball so that the metal slams into and rips the skin of her face with its barbs. As you release her, her magic turns to shadowy smoke around her as she blindly lashes out, screaming, blasting holes and propelling broken glass in every direction, some of which strikes you painfully and brings you to your knees.

But Embryx isn't in "every direction." She is standing directly over Diala, with the half-elf's blood dripping from the blunt end of her weapon. With a single up-and-down swing, she shatters the elder sister's skull like a watermelon and kills her in a grotesque, squelching instant.

For a moment, all is silent aside from Embryx's breathing - ragged, short, and full of fear. She turns to look at you, blood bespeckling her face, and lets out a horrified scream. "...What's happened to you!?" she explodes, tears rushing from her eyes. "Why wouldn't you stop and listen to me!?"

1. Declare Victory - "I suppose it was an epiphany," you reply, cradling the Pandemonium Door in your palms for the first time since you arrived in Mardenaal. "Diala claimed to know the Eldest's will, but more than anything else, that was her downfall. I am her will. Syrith wanted me to go to that room, and find that book..." you say, slack jawed and wide-eyed at all you've just achieved. "She knew I was ready, and all I had to do was ask myself, has my inner shadow fed? Is it sated?" you quote, devilishly.

2. Turn Tables - "I asked if you wanted to see me kill Diala. Why didn't you listen to me? Do you not understand what I'm capable of? Will you stand against ME next!?"

 

[joshuadim]

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[dikdik]

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[Damian0358]

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[hardcore.munchkin]

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[asphodelus]

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[turtwigwins]

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[bat_hacker]

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[Breadman]

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[K0mori]

1. Declare Victory - "I suppose it was an epiphany," you reply, cradling the Pandemonium Door in your palms for the first time since you arrived in Mardenaal. "Diala claimed to know the Eldest's will, but more than anything else, that was her downfall. I am her will. Syrith wanted me to go to that room, and find that book..." you say, slack jawed and wide-eyed at all you've just achieved. "She knew I was ready, and all I had to do was ask myself, has my inner shadow fed? Is it sated?" you quote, devilishly.

"...Well!?" Embryx snarls. "Is it!?"

The grin disappears from your face as emptiness burrows into your triumph and leaves you hollow inside. "What do you-"

"Have you had enough blood, yet, Agranne!?" she accosts. "Is it enough that I'm going to be picking Diala's fucking brain out of my clothing!?"

"You-" you stammer, on your back foot at the rejection of your sister. "You wanted me to do this!"

"I wanted us to do this, so that we can be free from her control. But I never agreed to whatever this is - this delusion of yours that you're the will of the Eldest... Gods! What book are you talking about, and what in the hells did it do to you!?"

You feel two parts of yourself reacting in opposite directions, and the sensation inflicts pain that rips a divide through your mind. You flinch and clutch at your head as a notion of insult does battle against shame, and a desire to punish butts heads with a fear of rejection. "D- delusion!?" you sputter. "I... I went to the study, searching for answers..."

"Answers to what?" Embryx demands, pointing her bloody morning star at you.

You meet her gaze and realize she has every intent to kill you if she can't find the person she spent the last two years with. Another sensation - dread - works its way through you, through to your hands, which twitch uncomfortably and threaten to drop the artifact you've thieved and murdered for. If things continue on this course, you will murder your only remaining true friend. "...I wanted to know how Syrith kept me on death's edge," you speak softly.

The drow's eyes narrow as she begins to recognize you again. Slowly, she lowers the spiked ball. "...You found a book in the study's collection," she says, goading you forward into your recollections.

The chill which brushed by you before all this began returns as the remaining revelry dies like fire in the rain. "...I- I felt drawn to it. A voice told me to take it," you reply.

"And when you did?" Embryx asks, an underlying gentleness returning to her voice that you've grown accustomed to over the course of your friendship. Even when you disappointed her earlier today by failing to assure her you'd do whatever was necessary to return her to life, should your adventures become tragic, you sensed a patience within her that could overcome your every flaw. And it truly settles into you that over the last few minutes, that patience was gone, entirely gone, for the first time since you met her. There's no more fight inside your mind. Shame has defeated insult, and fear of rejection reigns.

You've returned.

"Those words I spoke a moment ago were written inside, and I started repeating them and couldn't stop. The entire book was full of hand-made sigils and..." you shudder, "by the time I could breathe again, a part of me was locked away from myself. I can't even really explain it..." you struggle. "I think it might have been a hex of emotional manipulation, or something more powerful, but in written form."

Embryx looks past you, towards the entrance through which the two of you barged minutes ago. Another figure has joined you - Raffe, the sanitarium's only warlock. He stares down at the corpse of Diala in pure horror. "...What have you done?" he asks.

You're in no position to answer that. You, in your current state, could not have done this. It was shockingly reckless, and will undoubtedly complicated your life to a degree you aren't even prepared to fathom. Embryx does the talking instead: "...Syrith had no more use for Diala," she replies grimly, and you can't help but admire her nerve. "She sent Agranne a spark of divine inspiration."

More of the circle's faces begin to appear in the hallway behind Raffe, who remains utterly transfixed on the carnage before him. He steps through the door, getting a better look at the steadily-widening pool of blood and walking a half-circle around her to observe the broken glass and scattered belongings, although he never reaches for his wand. "...I don't even know where to begin," he remarks. "We'll have to get the word out to the pact sisters and call the circle to order, immediately. Will you stay and explain yourselves, or will you run?"

You can't believe the sort of matter-of-fact way in which Raffe asks the question. You realize it's because he sees the Pandemonium Door in the hands of the Terrorchild, and knows that regardless of the circle's opinion, there is no one in this city who can stop you from leaving if that's what you choose to do.

1. Face the Circle - Now is not the time to run. The explanation Embryx just gave was not only bold, but probably accurate, you realize in hindsight. Now would be a good time to back her up. "...We aren't leaving," you finally declare. You look to Embryx to assure her that you understand the gravity of the situation as you agree to stay - a decision which could very well backfire and kill one or both of you. "The circle will know how Diala's death fits into the Eldest's design."

2. Escape - You don't really care what happens next as you consider the possibility that the entire web of Diala's control is collapsing all around you. If you decide to ride away, to Sonnamille, or Zuklanar, or even all the way to Aelesh, where Embryx hails from, you can. But one problem remains. How will you gain access to the highest level of the coven and learn the secrets you desire if you openly attack its members and then run away with their things?

 

[Infab]

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[hardcore.munchkin]

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[joshuadim]

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