Infab
The Demon Fanatic
3
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Fantasy Terrorchild: Awakening
- Thread starter K0mori
- Start date
hardcore.munchkin
Professional hater
2
joshuadim
the writer
1
dikdik
colossal leaf and prince of the universe
3
turtwigwins
Junior Member
2
Damian0358
Roleplaying Procrastinator From Elsewhere
3
Breadman
Big loaf supreme
3
bat_hacker
New Member
3
Learn False Life
New
K0mori
Servant Supreme
Option 1: 1 Vote (13% - Range: 1-13)
Option 2: 2 Votes (25% - Range: 14-38)
Option 3: 5 Votes (63% - Range: 39-100)
Fae Roll: 93
Jannava looks at you tiredly. "What else is there to know?" she says. "I went over the basics a couple of days ago, and there's not a whole lot else I can teach you without - uh - teaching aids."
"Well, we're at a temple... There's probably a cemetery around."
Jannava sighs before standing up and dusting herself off. "...Not even before breakfast," she mutters, leading you around the edge of the temple toward the tree line where a number of a stone markers denote graves of past clerics and travelers. "Alright... Come on, Terrorchild. Let's find you a dead body to play with."
"...Why put it like that!?" you blurt out with a guffaw. "The whole reason you're in Turadal is to teach this shit! You're the expert on defiling graves, alright? And you know exactly where they are, huh?" you continue to rant as you follow her.
She rolls her eyes. "You were so casual about it: Oh hey Jannava, what's for breakfast, uhhh anyway can you teach me how to make skeletons dance?" she teases with a sarcastic grin. "...And of course I know where the graves are. The last posse of hunters that came after us had just one mage and that was almost enough to get us all killed. We need a plan, because I'd bet the next group will have as many mages as they can find."
"Not sure how well I'm going to be able to stick to plans, if I'm being honest," you reply pessimistically. "...And Corrinth too, but that goes without saying. Let's just pretend we have a really good plan, and that way when we abandon it in the heat of the moment and fight our way through, we won't have wasted all our time on thinking about it."
Jannava shrugs. "Fine. I'll see what Embryx and I can come up with, but for all our sakes', I hope the coven can get here before I have to watch you and Corrinth improvise again. Now listen: if you want to know how false life is made, you need to get compulsion out of your head. Compulsion is about controlling minds. False life is about creating them."
You feel a bit uneasy. "They don't think, do they?"
"Not like us; they're not going to be contemplating life and death. But anything that moves, thinks. Crows think. Spiders think. You're going to create something so simple, it's less sophisticated than the spider. At least they know how to build a web."
"Uh-huh." You reply. "What if I made it more sophisticated?" you ask out of curiosity. "Could you create a mind that's smart enough to solve problems, or even speak for itself?"
Jannava chuckles unsettlingly. "...Let's just start with the basics, okay?"
You watch as she uses magical strikes to blast away some of the rocks before joining her, until you find a rotten coffin door only a foot and a half below the surface of the ground. You look to the tiefling, having mild trepidations about what you're about to do. "They're buried pretty shallow, aren't they?" you ask, remembering the few times you've seen an open grave before and how deep they looked.
"Not really," she replies, grimly. "It doesn't take a lot of dirt to keep animals away from the remains, but you need to make sure the ground doesn't erode when it rains... You grew up near farms, too, didn't you? You'd want to dig deeper if you're worried someone might plow the ground you're digging into. Anyway-" she states, stepping down into the hole you've dug and finding a seam in the wood that she can slip her fingers into before prying hard, eventually breaking the lid of the coffin off from its faltering sides. You help her wriggle the boards free until you begin to understand the moldering form within - an ashen, crumbling, eyeless face stretched thin over brittle bones.
You can hardly look at it; the corpses in Purrosh were fresh, at least, and so the zombies Jannava created weren't quite so sickening. In the midst of battle, it was almost possible to forget that they were dead. But this? "Oh fuck," you say, backing up and covering your mouth reflexively.
"Yeah, it's not pretty," Jannava says. "Now get over here and take another look."
Reluctantly, you drag yourself over and take a more delicate look at the corpse you've unearthed. It looks neither peaceful nor wrathful in its current state. It seems only vacant and inanimate, like a grotesque statue. "...What now?" you ask.
Jannava sizes the body up for a moment. "Now...? Now you need to draw a bit of the raw anima in from the air around you. We're in a forest, Agranne. He might be long gone, but there's grass, and weeds, and trees, and all sorts of things, and you can tug on it just like you've pulled on souls. Except, before, you were grabbing something essential to an individual. We need the raw essence of life - everything - you see around you."
You attempt to follow Jannava's directions, trying to pull on the nature around you. The wind blows through the pathway, the cold cutting right through your clothing as you try to draw something in.
"Careful you don't grab onto my soul while you do this, alright?" Jannava says, uncomfortably. "When you start to sense a presence caught in your spell, you've got a bit of anima that you can work with. Only experience can tell you how much you need."
By the time she's finished speaking, you can already feel something in the air between your hands. "I feel it," you tell her. "If I can gather the essence of life, why can't I use it to heal wounds directly?" you ask, remembering how you learned during your long stay at the sanitarium that this was how clerics healed the sick and wounded.
"Because you're not 'gathering' it. You're trapping it, and forcing it to do as you say. Now, you need to shape that prison - a simple machine that the anima can manipulate without being allowed to escape. Understand?"
You nod. You're beginning to understand better what was meant by a 'magical construct' in Jannava's earlier remarks from days past.
1. Make the Bones Move - You envision a mechanism similar to a trunk with a hinged lid, and begin imprisoning the anima into that shape so that it can manipulate the jawbone of the corpse.
2. Gather More Power - You sense that you aren't gathering enough anima to achieve anything worthwhile, and so you redouble your efforts.
3. Make the Bones Talk - Your curiosity is getting the better of you. You decide to see if you can grant the construct a voice.
Option 2: 2 Votes (25% - Range: 14-38)
Option 3: 5 Votes (63% - Range: 39-100)
Fae Roll: 93
Jannava looks at you tiredly. "What else is there to know?" she says. "I went over the basics a couple of days ago, and there's not a whole lot else I can teach you without - uh - teaching aids."
"Well, we're at a temple... There's probably a cemetery around."
Jannava sighs before standing up and dusting herself off. "...Not even before breakfast," she mutters, leading you around the edge of the temple toward the tree line where a number of a stone markers denote graves of past clerics and travelers. "Alright... Come on, Terrorchild. Let's find you a dead body to play with."
"...Why put it like that!?" you blurt out with a guffaw. "The whole reason you're in Turadal is to teach this shit! You're the expert on defiling graves, alright? And you know exactly where they are, huh?" you continue to rant as you follow her.
She rolls her eyes. "You were so casual about it: Oh hey Jannava, what's for breakfast, uhhh anyway can you teach me how to make skeletons dance?" she teases with a sarcastic grin. "...And of course I know where the graves are. The last posse of hunters that came after us had just one mage and that was almost enough to get us all killed. We need a plan, because I'd bet the next group will have as many mages as they can find."
"Not sure how well I'm going to be able to stick to plans, if I'm being honest," you reply pessimistically. "...And Corrinth too, but that goes without saying. Let's just pretend we have a really good plan, and that way when we abandon it in the heat of the moment and fight our way through, we won't have wasted all our time on thinking about it."
Jannava shrugs. "Fine. I'll see what Embryx and I can come up with, but for all our sakes', I hope the coven can get here before I have to watch you and Corrinth improvise again. Now listen: if you want to know how false life is made, you need to get compulsion out of your head. Compulsion is about controlling minds. False life is about creating them."
You feel a bit uneasy. "They don't think, do they?"
"Not like us; they're not going to be contemplating life and death. But anything that moves, thinks. Crows think. Spiders think. You're going to create something so simple, it's less sophisticated than the spider. At least they know how to build a web."
"Uh-huh." You reply. "What if I made it more sophisticated?" you ask out of curiosity. "Could you create a mind that's smart enough to solve problems, or even speak for itself?"
Jannava chuckles unsettlingly. "...Let's just start with the basics, okay?"
You watch as she uses magical strikes to blast away some of the rocks before joining her, until you find a rotten coffin door only a foot and a half below the surface of the ground. You look to the tiefling, having mild trepidations about what you're about to do. "They're buried pretty shallow, aren't they?" you ask, remembering the few times you've seen an open grave before and how deep they looked.
"Not really," she replies, grimly. "It doesn't take a lot of dirt to keep animals away from the remains, but you need to make sure the ground doesn't erode when it rains... You grew up near farms, too, didn't you? You'd want to dig deeper if you're worried someone might plow the ground you're digging into. Anyway-" she states, stepping down into the hole you've dug and finding a seam in the wood that she can slip her fingers into before prying hard, eventually breaking the lid of the coffin off from its faltering sides. You help her wriggle the boards free until you begin to understand the moldering form within - an ashen, crumbling, eyeless face stretched thin over brittle bones.
You can hardly look at it; the corpses in Purrosh were fresh, at least, and so the zombies Jannava created weren't quite so sickening. In the midst of battle, it was almost possible to forget that they were dead. But this? "Oh fuck," you say, backing up and covering your mouth reflexively.
"Yeah, it's not pretty," Jannava says. "Now get over here and take another look."
Reluctantly, you drag yourself over and take a more delicate look at the corpse you've unearthed. It looks neither peaceful nor wrathful in its current state. It seems only vacant and inanimate, like a grotesque statue. "...What now?" you ask.
Jannava sizes the body up for a moment. "Now...? Now you need to draw a bit of the raw anima in from the air around you. We're in a forest, Agranne. He might be long gone, but there's grass, and weeds, and trees, and all sorts of things, and you can tug on it just like you've pulled on souls. Except, before, you were grabbing something essential to an individual. We need the raw essence of life - everything - you see around you."
You attempt to follow Jannava's directions, trying to pull on the nature around you. The wind blows through the pathway, the cold cutting right through your clothing as you try to draw something in.
"Careful you don't grab onto my soul while you do this, alright?" Jannava says, uncomfortably. "When you start to sense a presence caught in your spell, you've got a bit of anima that you can work with. Only experience can tell you how much you need."
By the time she's finished speaking, you can already feel something in the air between your hands. "I feel it," you tell her. "If I can gather the essence of life, why can't I use it to heal wounds directly?" you ask, remembering how you learned during your long stay at the sanitarium that this was how clerics healed the sick and wounded.
"Because you're not 'gathering' it. You're trapping it, and forcing it to do as you say. Now, you need to shape that prison - a simple machine that the anima can manipulate without being allowed to escape. Understand?"
You nod. You're beginning to understand better what was meant by a 'magical construct' in Jannava's earlier remarks from days past.
1. Make the Bones Move - You envision a mechanism similar to a trunk with a hinged lid, and begin imprisoning the anima into that shape so that it can manipulate the jawbone of the corpse.
2. Gather More Power - You sense that you aren't gathering enough anima to achieve anything worthwhile, and so you redouble your efforts.
3. Make the Bones Talk - Your curiosity is getting the better of you. You decide to see if you can grant the construct a voice.
Infab
The Demon Fanatic
1
Breadman
Big loaf supreme
3
joshuadim
the writer
1
turtwigwins
Junior Member
1
Damian0358
Roleplaying Procrastinator From Elsewhere
2
bat_hacker
New Member
1
hardcore.munchkin
Professional hater
3
Make the Bones Talk
New
K0mori
Servant Supreme
Option 1: 4 Votes (57% - Range: 1-57)
Option 2: 1 Vote (14% Range: 58-71)
Option 3: 2 Votes (29% Range: 72-100)
Fae Roll: 95
You gaze at the decayed face of the unearthed body, imagining the tongue which once rested behind his bared teeth, the windpipe and sinews which once ran from his throat, down, and the wind rising from his lungs. You structure the "prison" Jannava spoke of like a bag of air, inflating and deflating to move the voice upwards. You try to recreate the resonance of a voice box, but, unsure of how such a thing is actually composed, your mind conjures a fanciful thing which has no chance of working. But lastly, you imagine that mouth, constraining and shaping the voice, changing the sounds and producing words.
"What are you waiting for?" Jannava asks, impatiently. "Just try to make it move - nothing fancy."
You drive your first, and woefully misguided, construct into the body of the corpse, and watch eagerly for results.
It moves.
You jump backwards a bit, the fur on your back standing on end as you watch the crumbling corpse shudder, its chest thrashing a bit as its teeth chatter, most breaking loose from their position and tumbling into the hollow of the mouth. But the worst is the sound - what you hear isn't a voice, but a breathless struggle, a groan so ragged and disgusting that no living person could ever replicate it. It grows in volume, half hissing and half moaning... a noise one might give in the midst of death throws, but warped by decay to the point of loathing.
"Oh- Oh gods," you stammer, terrified out of your wits.
Jannava looks critically at the creature, nodding thoughtfully at your work. "...Yep. That's what happens when you ignore the lesson plan. Destroy it."
You immediately comply, thankful that you can end the miserable thing you've created and enjoy the silence afterward. But even after you use a magical strike to break the head loose from the body and shatter your fragile construct, your imagination won't let go of the horrifying sound of the dead man's voice. Jannava, meanwhile, seems undisturbed; she's probably seen, and especially heard, these sorts of misadventures before. Maybe in her own past, maybe with her own lover, she sought to hear that lost sound and replaced it by mistake with the stuff of nightmares. Nonetheless, she indifferently steps into the grave to straddle the body and reattach its head.
"Try again," she directs you as she stands up and clears the way. "If you can't speak without a tongue, how is the construct supposed to do it? And if you want anything except moaning and screaming, you'll need a mind that can handle words."
You interrupt her. "Wait, it can't speak without a tongue, but it can move without muscles? How does that work?"
"The construct is the muscle, and not just the mind, but it has to have something to push or pull against... Think - you can make a skeleton walk, but would you expect to be able to make it fly without wings?"
You realize that there's a frustration in Jannava's tone - not so much at your disregard for her directions, but of your naivety towards the things she's been trying to teach you, in general. "...I- I think I get it," you reassure her. "So, if I wanted to make something that can talk, it'll need to be fresh."
"At the very least, the tongue would need to be," Jannava says with a nod.
You blink. "...Yes, I see," you state, your eyes wide as you suddenly put the theory together. Since the magical construct is soulless and merely occupies a presentment of dead materials, it won't differentiate between the parts of one body and the parts of another. You could, in theory, create a creature which is composed of the parts of multiple people, or multiple types of animal, and animate it with false life. As parts rot and degrade, the being would lose functionality, gradually, but these things could be replaced if suitable parts are found. It hits you that a being smart enough to speak for itself would also be aware of this degradation and the monstrosity of its construction, and so it would either exist in unthinkable horror, or it would need to be imbued with an evil mind that doesn't loathe its form.
You take a deep breath and calm yourself, before attempting to capture more anima for your spell. Jannava watches you carefully as you draw in more power than before, so that the grass and weeds nearby your feet begin to wilt from the drain. "That's enough," she warns you, "focus on the construct!"
You imagine the simple form of a man, with the mind of an obedient soldier. Its only directive will be to protect you and your coven sisters from anyone or anything hostile. Once you're confident in your design, you begin applying the trapped anima into the corpse, and this time, you find it much less ambiguous - your ideas map easily to the wretched thing you see before you, and once the anima fully leaves your grip, the corpse once again shudders into movement, silently wriggling itself upwards until its arms can clear the opening of the coffin and paddle at the ground outside.
Soon, you watch in morbid fascination as it rises to its feet, shambling about in search of something on the ground, until it finds a dead, fallen branch from a nearby tree. It picks the branch up and holds it like a sword, turning slowly and scanning the surrounding area. "Good job," Jannava says, cracking a smile. "It won't hold up very long in a fight, but it'll definitely scare away eavesdroppers."
You feel a bit tired after the exercise, and so you quickly touch the Pandemonium Door in your pocket to refresh yourself before offering it to your teacher. Jannava palms the artifact before pausing a moment to think. "...You know, if we could find a larger graveyard, we could add a lot more numbers to our side with a few necromancers. If you're willing to share the Door, I think we could get hundreds up and moving within a day or two."
Before you can respond, Corrinth steps out of the temple and notices the chill in the air. She glances around and spots the two of you and your creation, stufies it for a moment, and then nods approvingly. With a wave, she turns away and seats herself next to the fire, which only reminds you of your own discomfort. "...Embryx should be back any minute now," you think aloud. "Let's go warm up."
The tiefling curses under her breath. "...Fuck! I knew I was forgetting something."
You gag, as does Embryx, while Corrinth laughs nervously.
1. Find Some Water - "I think there's a jug of water inside the temple we can use. We packed soap, too. We'll make this work," you assure everyone as you head for the temple doors. You glance back, wondering if Embryx will take the opportunity to follow you in and speak with you alone.
2. Refuse the Rabbit - You can't help but picture the eyeless face of the corpse you raised as you look down at your hands, and then the rabbit Jannava is still clutching. "I... I can't. If you guys can eat that, fine, but I need to clean my hands and find something else."
Option 2: 1 Vote (14% Range: 58-71)
Option 3: 2 Votes (29% Range: 72-100)
Fae Roll: 95
You gaze at the decayed face of the unearthed body, imagining the tongue which once rested behind his bared teeth, the windpipe and sinews which once ran from his throat, down, and the wind rising from his lungs. You structure the "prison" Jannava spoke of like a bag of air, inflating and deflating to move the voice upwards. You try to recreate the resonance of a voice box, but, unsure of how such a thing is actually composed, your mind conjures a fanciful thing which has no chance of working. But lastly, you imagine that mouth, constraining and shaping the voice, changing the sounds and producing words.
"What are you waiting for?" Jannava asks, impatiently. "Just try to make it move - nothing fancy."
You drive your first, and woefully misguided, construct into the body of the corpse, and watch eagerly for results.
It moves.
You jump backwards a bit, the fur on your back standing on end as you watch the crumbling corpse shudder, its chest thrashing a bit as its teeth chatter, most breaking loose from their position and tumbling into the hollow of the mouth. But the worst is the sound - what you hear isn't a voice, but a breathless struggle, a groan so ragged and disgusting that no living person could ever replicate it. It grows in volume, half hissing and half moaning... a noise one might give in the midst of death throws, but warped by decay to the point of loathing.
"Oh- Oh gods," you stammer, terrified out of your wits.
Jannava looks critically at the creature, nodding thoughtfully at your work. "...Yep. That's what happens when you ignore the lesson plan. Destroy it."
You immediately comply, thankful that you can end the miserable thing you've created and enjoy the silence afterward. But even after you use a magical strike to break the head loose from the body and shatter your fragile construct, your imagination won't let go of the horrifying sound of the dead man's voice. Jannava, meanwhile, seems undisturbed; she's probably seen, and especially heard, these sorts of misadventures before. Maybe in her own past, maybe with her own lover, she sought to hear that lost sound and replaced it by mistake with the stuff of nightmares. Nonetheless, she indifferently steps into the grave to straddle the body and reattach its head.
"Try again," she directs you as she stands up and clears the way. "If you can't speak without a tongue, how is the construct supposed to do it? And if you want anything except moaning and screaming, you'll need a mind that can handle words."
You interrupt her. "Wait, it can't speak without a tongue, but it can move without muscles? How does that work?"
"The construct is the muscle, and not just the mind, but it has to have something to push or pull against... Think - you can make a skeleton walk, but would you expect to be able to make it fly without wings?"
You realize that there's a frustration in Jannava's tone - not so much at your disregard for her directions, but of your naivety towards the things she's been trying to teach you, in general. "...I- I think I get it," you reassure her. "So, if I wanted to make something that can talk, it'll need to be fresh."
"At the very least, the tongue would need to be," Jannava says with a nod.
You blink. "...Yes, I see," you state, your eyes wide as you suddenly put the theory together. Since the magical construct is soulless and merely occupies a presentment of dead materials, it won't differentiate between the parts of one body and the parts of another. You could, in theory, create a creature which is composed of the parts of multiple people, or multiple types of animal, and animate it with false life. As parts rot and degrade, the being would lose functionality, gradually, but these things could be replaced if suitable parts are found. It hits you that a being smart enough to speak for itself would also be aware of this degradation and the monstrosity of its construction, and so it would either exist in unthinkable horror, or it would need to be imbued with an evil mind that doesn't loathe its form.
You take a deep breath and calm yourself, before attempting to capture more anima for your spell. Jannava watches you carefully as you draw in more power than before, so that the grass and weeds nearby your feet begin to wilt from the drain. "That's enough," she warns you, "focus on the construct!"
You imagine the simple form of a man, with the mind of an obedient soldier. Its only directive will be to protect you and your coven sisters from anyone or anything hostile. Once you're confident in your design, you begin applying the trapped anima into the corpse, and this time, you find it much less ambiguous - your ideas map easily to the wretched thing you see before you, and once the anima fully leaves your grip, the corpse once again shudders into movement, silently wriggling itself upwards until its arms can clear the opening of the coffin and paddle at the ground outside.
Soon, you watch in morbid fascination as it rises to its feet, shambling about in search of something on the ground, until it finds a dead, fallen branch from a nearby tree. It picks the branch up and holds it like a sword, turning slowly and scanning the surrounding area. "Good job," Jannava says, cracking a smile. "It won't hold up very long in a fight, but it'll definitely scare away eavesdroppers."
You feel a bit tired after the exercise, and so you quickly touch the Pandemonium Door in your pocket to refresh yourself before offering it to your teacher. Jannava palms the artifact before pausing a moment to think. "...You know, if we could find a larger graveyard, we could add a lot more numbers to our side with a few necromancers. If you're willing to share the Door, I think we could get hundreds up and moving within a day or two."
Before you can respond, Corrinth steps out of the temple and notices the chill in the air. She glances around and spots the two of you and your creation, stufies it for a moment, and then nods approvingly. With a wave, she turns away and seats herself next to the fire, which only reminds you of your own discomfort. "...Embryx should be back any minute now," you think aloud. "Let's go warm up."
---
A few minutes later, as you and Corrinth awkwardly try to make conversation to avoid more hostilities, Embryx emerges from the woods carrying a dead rabbit. "It's not much, but it's all I could find," she says, unhappily. She hands her trophy over to Jannava, who takes out a knife to begin preparing the creature for cooking, before noticing the magicked skeleton you both created in her absence. "Oh! shit!" she sputters. "...I wasn't expecting - sorry. I didn't realize you'd be brushing up on your necromancy while I was gone. Wait - Jannava, have you washed your hands since...?"
The tiefling curses under her breath. "...Fuck! I knew I was forgetting something."
You gag, as does Embryx, while Corrinth laughs nervously.
1. Find Some Water - "I think there's a jug of water inside the temple we can use. We packed soap, too. We'll make this work," you assure everyone as you head for the temple doors. You glance back, wondering if Embryx will take the opportunity to follow you in and speak with you alone.
2. Refuse the Rabbit - You can't help but picture the eyeless face of the corpse you raised as you look down at your hands, and then the rabbit Jannava is still clutching. "I... I can't. If you guys can eat that, fine, but I need to clean my hands and find something else."
Last edited:
turtwigwins
Junior Member
1
Infab
The Demon Fanatic
1
Damian0358
Roleplaying Procrastinator From Elsewhere
1
joshuadim
the writer
1
hardcore.munchkin
Professional hater
1
Breadman
Big loaf supreme
1
Find Some Water
New
K0mori
Servant Supreme
She seems a bit anxious at your glance and doesn't follow you immediately, so you push in through the doors and search around in the dim light. Eventually, you find what you're after: you pull the heavy jug away from the wall and find that it's a bit too much for you to carry by yourself, when Embryx appears in the entryway behind you.
"Hey," she says, gently shutting the door behind herself. She motions at the jug. "I'll help you get that, but I just... I wanted to say a couple things while we don't have an audience."
You straighten up and face her, unsure of what's about to happen; up to this point, you've made a lot of assumptions as to who Embryx is and how things would be if you confessed your feelings for her. You never really accounted for your own growth as a person; you're not the same girl who wandered into Tashlaan two years ago, and for a drow who sees life pass at a third of the speed, the difference probably seems even more sudden. You just hope that she isn't about to tell you to keep your distance.
"I didn't mean to react the way I did," she says slowly. "It's just that ever since I met you, I've had this little fantasy of the two of us alone somewhere on a clear night, sitting beside the campfire, without some trouble nipping at our heels or some big threat in our path. I thought I'd have the chance to say to you how much I love the sound of your voice, and the way your ears perk up every time you see me. There was so much... I thought I would have a cup of drink in my hands that I could stare into because I'd be so nervous that I can't quite look at you. But, I would see you looking at me in the reflection, and I would know... It would finally be okay for me to tell you I love you. And when Corrinth got that Door yesterday, I didn't know if I would ever have the chance to say any of it."
You begin to sense the origin of Embryx's disappointment at your gesture, earlier today. Your unchecked ambition and foolish mistakes, as well as Corrinth's intervention, robbed her of an opportunity to share a single intimate moment with you after years of captivity, burdened by Diala's watchful eye. You each had confessed love out of fear of losing the other forever, but there remained so many milestones ahead which Embryx must have charted in that active imagination of hers about when and how you would share those "first" moments... and today, you took "first kiss" off of that list without a second thought.
"I... I'm sorry," you reply, nervously. "I wasn't thinking. I just got scared because I knew you could see me acting strangely. I wanted to prove to you that you're still at the front of my mind, even with how messy everything has gotten lately. Words are..." you trail off, feeling angry with yourself as mist clouds your eyes. "Words are weak, Embryx. I needed to say something stronger than words could carry. You're the only one I can't lie to; you've known me too long and you know too well who I am. ...You know I'm not in control of all this."
She nods, fiercely, eyes hardening as she considers the totality of what "all this" entails. "...I do know. Syrith has been pulling your strings so much that you can't hardly be yourself; you're too busy being Her puppet, dancing for Her, bringing about Her design. Ever since I woke up to Corrinth's stupid, ugly, fae-touched grin, I've been wondering if I was wrong - that I didn't almost lose you yesterday, but rather some other day before. Maybe when you read that cursed book? I held you that morning, and felt closer to you then than ever before, and than I do now. I don't know the woman that killed Diala. I don't know the one who welcomes Corrinth back into her life and drinks faerie wine even when she knows she can't control the consequences. And I don't know why you want to wage war against Turadal... We could have run away to some far away place, and tried again with seeking out your sister... But not now. We're too stuck into it now."
You feel something akin to Syrith's piercing touch. Your earlier comment - that words are weak - now feels utterly misguided, as her words are wounding you deeply. You realize that maybe your words are weak because they lack the sort of sincerity that hers carry. You want to tell her that it isn't true, but you can't be so sure that you haven't crossed lines you can't return from. Even if you haven't, there's no telling what ways the Eldest will manipulate your life in the near future, or how you'll emerge from it all. "...I can't make you the kinds of promises I want to make you," you reply, heartbroken. "I know you love a particular shade of me that I don't know if I can keep - and that it'll die and be extinguished forever if you walk away from me now. ...But I want you to know: no matter what I do or what I become in the future, I'll always miss you."
Embryx's stern expression melts quickly, replaced with anguish, as if she hadn't realized until now how much you were hurting over the situation as well. She shakes her head emphatically. "...I don't want to walk away, and I won't. I may not understand you right now, but I have a long life to live, and I will figure it out." Then, she says something very surprising: "...I'll drink the wine."
"What!?"
Embryx walks up to you with a pleading look in her eyes. "I'll drink the fae wine. I won't allow myself to fear any part of you, Agranne. I want to laugh when you laugh, and cry when you cry. If you're fae-touched then dammit - I'll be fae-touched too. We'll both be just a little bit insane, but at least we'll have each other and we won't be all alone. Please."
1. Encourage - Sox is coming back tonight, and you'd expect him to bring more of the wine that led you to the faerie circle. Ultimately, you know that it wasn't the wine that affected you, but the revelry you took part in, so if you can keep Embryx at your side, you might prevent her from suffering from madness... "If that'll restore some trust between us, I won't say no," you answer, softly. "I really don't want anything bad to happen to you, and I'd still love you if you changed your mind."
2. Discourage - "Please don't do that to yourself," you beg her. "I'll grow old and die someday - and you'll still be young and healthy... I want you to enjoy everything that life has to offer not just while I'm here, but afterwards. I don't want to see you hurt yourself or drive yourself mad just because of me." You feel a heavy shame settle over you. Is this really what you're driving her to consider?
3. Reject - "...I'm not the only girl in the world, Embryx. Don't waste your life and your good health on me like this," you tell her. Your heart feels like ash in your chest, but you can't seem to bring yourself to cry.
joshuadim
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