Fantasy Terrorchild: Awakening

[bat_hacker]

3

 

[K0mori]

3. Cauterize the Wound - A silent voice whispers: Corrinth can help you.

Shivers.

You feel that same note of enticement and dread that brought you to take and read the tome that briefly took your sanity. Perhaps the Eldest is guiding your actions again, because you can't seem to break away and think clearly - so instead of running to your allies, you summon up a mote of enchanted flame in your off-hand and point your fingers at Corrinth's midsection. You can't tell where the wound is actually situated, however, since the bloody patch blends into her dark clothing. "Show me where it hurts," you force yourself to say through clenched teeth, enraged at the undeserved mercy you're about to bestow. "Syrith still has a plan for you, Corrinth."

Corrinth stares back at you in bewilderment, her head lolling in delirium from the blood loss. All you can see in her expression is despair, now, and she doesn't seem interested in telling you what you want to know. It seems as if she's patiently waiting for death - but unfortunately for her, the Eldest won't allow it - not right now.

You jam your fingers into the flesh and burn her all the way through to the sound of a bloodcurdling scream, ignoring her thrashing against the cobblestone road until the job is done. Then, as you stand and flick her red and burnt-black humors off your digits, you compel her: "Now get up! There are hunters coming!"

She stands, crying out in pain at every movement of her torn muscles and charred innards. Now finally able to go back for Embryx and Jannava without some mind-bending whisper tugging at your ear, you launch yourself into the air, using telekinesis to rocket toward your destination. You find that the witch hunters on horseback are busy clearing out the last of the tiefling's undead thralls, just seconds away from breaking through and killing the witches at the apparent center of all this death and destruction.

Still carrying Embryx's morning star, you descend like a meteor and release it at speed, slowing yourself just in time to witness the falling weapon shatter a hunter's skull, leaving his headless body to flop over the back of his horse and land messily on the ground. The others look up in shock and find you there, still dripping with Corrinth's blood and filled with murderous rage. They panic and begin to scatter, their horses rearing back and kicking at the air as the men and women shout their obscenities, but you're in no mood to let them get away. You stretch your hand toward one and squeeze a fist, watching as their skin and clothing erupt into enchanted fire. The next, you compel to vomit, and observe them retching in their saddle before falling off to the ground, gagging, prodding fingers into their throats in search of relief from the command.

But then, you realize a third hunter isn't moved at your display. Instead, he's staring at you down. "Enough!" he shouts, lifting his sword. From a ring worn on his dominant hand, a bright flash emerges and engulfs you in a blinding white light. "Murderer! Monster! Have we not endured your heresy enough, witch!? All the world will suffer with every breath you take!"

You can't see - you feel as if you're trapped in an opposite realm to the world beyond death that your dreams have desensitized you to. You're not even sure if you're fully upright, as the mage's voice booms at you with righteous judgement. Even closing your eyes fails to shield you from its light, and you experience a sensation of shame that you haven't felt in years. The sharp note of a woman screaming reaches your ears - Jannava? "Argh...! You bastard! YOU BASTARD!" You scream, flailing in futility until an arrow pierces you in the arm and the leg.

"Embrace your death!" the mage demands, "Free us from your miserable presence!"

And then, all at once, you can see again.

You're still floating in the air, but upside-down now, your own blood running and dripping from your chin. Looking around in a panic as you right yourself, you piece it together: Jannava has been impaled through the heart by one of the riders' lances, but the mage who's held you powerless is clutching his neck, trying in vain to will himself to breathe, but he can't, and you know immediately that Corrinth is close by and utilizing one of her deadliest arts by compelling him to die.

You look to Embryx, however, and see something that frightens you: she's lying face down in the road, ignored by the hunters entirely. Is she already dead? Or have they mistaken her for another victim of Corrinth's slaughter?

1. Save Jannava - With the Pandemonium Door's power, she can use false-life to hold her heart together and keep her blood flowing. As to what comes next - you'll figure it out later! You land next to her and press the artifact into her hands, praying silently to Syrith that you're not too late for either her or Embryx.

2. Get Embryx to Safety - All you care about is getting Embryx away from here. You ignore the pain in your limbs, the imminent death of Jannava, and the fate of Corrinth as you push through the air to her, grabbing her and moving her toward the inn you originally sought when you came to town.

3. Rage - With the mage taken care of, there's nothing stopping you from pulling the hunters apart. The first three were were just a warm up... There's at least a dozen more closing in.

 

[joshuadim]

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[Infab]

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[Breadman]

3

 

[dikdik]

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[asphodelus]

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[hardcore.munchkin]

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[turtwigwins]

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[Damian0358]

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[bat_hacker]

1

 

[K0mori]

The vote is tied - DEALER'S CHOICE:

1. Save Jannava - With the Pandemonium Door's power, she can use false-life to hold her heart together and keep her blood flowing. As to what comes next - you'll figure it out later! You land next to her and press the artifact into her hands, praying silently to Syrith that you're not too late for either her or Embryx.

A light appears in Jannava's glossed-over eyes as she groans, one free hand grasping her wand from the ground at her side. At first, the sound is quiet, but grows in intensity as dark smoke rises from the tip of her implement and the ground all around her. Her voice becomes an agonized wail as she curls in on herself and shakes, wand pointed inward toward her wound. Despite the imminent danger of the hunters closing in on you, you can't pull yourself away from the spectacle until, at last, she completes the magical construct necessary to instill false life into her heart, sealing the fissure and forcing it to beat on.

With telekinesis, you pull the Pandemonium Door back into your hand in time to turn and meet the riders closing on your position. With a singular strike, you blow a hole through the center of the lead rider before gripping the fragments of ribs and using them as projectiles. The riders behind him shield themselves with varying degrees of success, but it's all for naught - they believe themselves to be facing an ordinary witch, not whatever it is that you've become. You forego telekinesis and other sophisticated means of killing in favor of that most basic instinct that led to your first murder - raking your hands through the air in front of you, your magic drags their souls backwards as if carried by an infernal sail - until the riders fall limp from their saddles. The shadowy smoke is billowing from the tips of your claws, but you feel no enervation.

One of the runaway horses charges ahead in fear, its hooves beating against the cobblestones as it nears Embryx. Your arms erupt into shadow as you push broadly, akin to how you knocked back the onlookers in Tashlaan in what seemed a lifetime ago. Except, this time, you have no reason to hold back, and instead of merely shoving against the horse, you create a magical barrier - the horse slams into it like an invisible wall, squealing as its legs buckle and its body rolls upwards into the air before dropping on the ground vertically. With a sweep of your hand, you begin dragging the horse across the ground, kicking and panicking, as you let you an inarticulate scream.

The hunters have no time to react as the horse is thrown from the ground and into their path, crashing into another rider and creating a chaotic jumble of bodies that tumble to the ground, catching up a second rider behind them, killing one from a broken back as he's folded backwards under the weight of the animals. Now, finally, the hunters understand the true nature of the threat they're facing, and turn to flee, leaving two injured men in the roadway who begin to scream and beg you to think of what you're doing before you rend their souls from their bodies.

You feel a tiredness begin to set in, but it isn't your pneuma depleting - instead, it's the two arrows which pierced you beginning to take their toll on you. "Go on...! RUN!" you scream after the distant hunters as they disappear through the city gates. "IF YOU EVER COME MY WAY AGAIN, I'LL KILL YOU ALL - AND TEN INNOCENTS EACH FOR THE TROUBLE!"

You scream again, letting out all your rage and frustration so that you can finally breathe, but once you can finally confront the reality of your predicament, you realize how much worse this exposure will be than the first time, back in Tashlaan. There's no "bigger city" to disappear to - Thandan is both far away and only marginally bigger than Mardenaal, and now that the hunters know that the Terrorchild is afoot and in possession of limitless magic, it's only a matter of time before the King and Queen of Turadal call up an army to seek your death.

It's far too much to consider right now, and so overwhelming that you might never be ready to, and so you walk in silence to where Embryx lay to see whether your worst fears will be confirmed. You place your hand on her gently, and feel the rise and fall of her breathing, thanking the Eldest for this most basic mercy. Turning her over, you see how badly she's been beaten, and simply know that without the help of a cleric, she won't be able to travel for some time - a major problem if you expect to escape this land.

"...Agranne!" Jannava shouts, and you look up to see Corrinth limping her way out of the shadows to meet you again, holding her wand out in front of herself.

She seems ready to collapse at any moment, and in fact she stumbles into the nearest wall. "...Why didn't you kill me?" she huffs, her voice measured and calm, more like you remember her from your time in her hometown. "You said Syrith still has a plan for me? She doesn't... She... You... You're wrong! I'm - I'm free of her," she says, her eyes wild and full of a fury she can't begin to explain.

You face her without fear; she has no more advantages, and you can kill her at any time you choose. But you have questions which cause you to hesitate, questions that will haunt you if they go unanswered.

1. Interrogate - "Nothing you've done makes any fucking sense," you reply, hatefully. "What's gotten into your head? Are you just trying to get me to kill you? Is that all you want?"

2. Accuse - "All you've ever cared about is control," you mock. "You can't escape the Eldest's design - none of us can. Wasn't that the whole point of trapping me into the coven? Why you threatened my family!?"

3. Compel - You're not going to talk to Corrinth on her terms; it's time to play the cards you hold, starting by doing what you should have done, years ago: you command Corrinth to break her own wand.

4. Kill - Fuck it.

 

[Infab]

1

 

[dikdik]

1

 

[joshuadim]

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[Breadman]

4

 

[hardcore.munchkin]

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[Damian0358]

2

 

[turtwigwins]

1

 

[K0mori]

1. Interrogate - "Nothing you've done makes any fucking sense," you reply, hatefully. "What's gotten into your head? Are you just trying to get me to kill you? Is that all you want?"

Corrinth stoops down to the ground, placing her wand there before taking a wobbly step backwards and falling to the ground. "...All I 'want?' I don't want you to kill me at all, Agranne. Things just got wildly out of hand, and I'm only surprised you didn't."

You don't have any patience to sit and listen to her ramble. "Tell me everything you think I even might want to know, right now, or I'll force it out of you," you threaten as you pick her wand off the ground and loom over her.

"I will," she replies emphatically, knowing full well how many ways you can make her suffer and how ready you are to use every one of them. "...When Diala took you and Embryx in, I had a little argument with Nytha. She told me she was leaving for Sonnamille right away, and that I wasn't coming with. I was angry - wouldn't you be? - and so I compelled her to tell me what her problem was." Corrinth pauses a moment, thinking about the moment with a growing, horrible smile. "...She said everything you'd expect: that you were right, and everything that happened in Tashlaan was my fault for pushing you too hard. But then she said something you wouldn't expect - that she had been watching me get worse, over the years, and that it was because of my blood. You see... I'm not a quarter fae, like I thought. I'm three-quarters, barely human at all!"

"And how did she know that?" you demand.

Corrinth snickers. "Elves, aren't they a trip? She's ninety years old, Agranne! She knew my father - she met him on her first visit to Tashlaan three months before I was born, just passing through. Yeah, she and my mother had a bit of history they decided to keep from me, and it's all because Nytha had to spoon-feed my worthless, shit-sack of a mother the facts about what happens when you screw multiple generations of fae into a bloodline!"

You see where this is going. "...Madness."

Corrinth snickers, but her laughter rises into an unnerving, inhuman pitch, almost akin to the frightening noises she produced in wildshape. "Ha ha hA HA HA-! Oh... Ohhh," she moans, clutching her wound before adding in a matter-of-fact way, "I'm dying."

"Yeah?" Jannava interjects, "Me too. Agranne," she says, looking to you urgently, "my heart is beating undead right now. I need to find a cleric who can fix me up or I'm going to die a slow and painful death over the next few days as it starts rotting in my chest."

"I happen to know a few clerics in the area that we could call on," Corrinth replies. "With a little compulsion, or maybe a little manipulation, we could get them to fix you up."

You look at her skeptically. "What about you?" you ask.

Corrinth's smile disappears, and she seems to collect herself for a moment. "...No. A cleric can't fix what's wrong with me," she says. "...That's why Nytha moved to Tashlaan. She knows how bad the fae-touched wind up in the end, from what she saw down in the deep woods, and so she wanted to wait and see if I was going to become some kind of miracle child who'd keep my mind intact. My mother, you know, she believed that Syrith was the answer. She was in denial, thinking the Eldest was going to save me. ...Needless to say, the day was coming fast that Nytha was going to have to put me down. After that, she would have taken control of the circle."

"Is that why you killed her?" you ask.

Corrinth looks at you funny. "I didn't kill her. In the moment I just shut down, and she left for elf country, and by the time I really wanted to kill her for lying to me all my life, she was long gone. So I just... changed my appearance and went on living, seeing if I could bump into other fae like myself." She suddenly smiles more brightly. "...And did I ever! We're so much more common than you'd think - we're just really good at hiding!"

Then, as quickly as the smile appeared, it fades, a more human expression of grief falling over her.

1. Test - You decide to check her honesty. "Was *any* of this a lie? Tell no lies."

2. Revisit - You still haven't told me why you took the Door, and what all this bullshit was for!" you demand, angrily. "The hunters are going to tell damned-near everyone in the country about us!"

3. Call Out - "You're torn about this, aren't you?" you accuse. "You said all that shit about wanting to remake the circle, and then you're acting suicidal..."

4. Empathize - For Corrinth, these past two years were like a nightmare - she lost all of her friends and loved ones, gave up on her religion, and has been slowly losing her sanity. Even if you can't forgive her, maybe you should be more gentle with her.

 

[Breadman]

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[joshuadim]

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[Infab]

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[hardcore.munchkin]

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[dikdik]

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