12-26-2018, 08:26 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-29-2018, 03:56 AM by Arjay Lo'Ran.)
(note: there will be more installments showing Arjay's little activities here. Until they're all done, he hasn't even left the Hub. Time is moving faster in his Toril than in the Hub these days)
In the little Drow outpost, those who entered against their will always regretted doing so alive. Such had been the way of things since the camp had been founded, such had been maintained in the centuries since this lookout posting had continued. There were few creature comforts afforded to the Drow posted here, and few diversions from the dangerous intrigues that came part and parcel with being Drow. The only thing that they could really unite together on was the capture of surface races. The warriors who captured them gained favor for the successful capture, the wizards got to study any of the new toys that were stripped from their captives, and the priestesses? Well, the priestesses had their attention diverted from the men of the camp for a few days per captive, and that benefited everyone equally.
The captive party was in a sorry state, and Kelthyr Imrael knew that those of his party who’d succumbed to the torture they’d been put through were the lucky ones. What, exactly, did it mean to be sacrificed to Lolth? The priestesses who tortured them claimed that it gave Lolth their soul for all eternity, but that couldn’t be true, could it? Could a simple act of murder on an altar really steal his soul from its rightful place in Arvandor? His faith told him that it wasn’t so, but he couldn’t shake that fear, that horror that he might be forever separated, even in death, from his family, from his gods, from all of the elves that had come before him. He wanted to get out of here. He needed to get out of here, and he needed to get his friends away as well, those who still lived, at least. There was no escape, though, was there. They were all tied to this altar, and the familiar faces of the high-ranking Drow surrounded them, leering at them. All that they needed was the arrival of the ranking priestess, and the sacrifice would begin.
None of this, though, kept him from noticing the strange Drow in the gold domino mask.
This one… hadn’t been at any of the other sessions of torture, hadn’t been in the party that caught them, didn’t really seem to have any place among them that he’d been able to discern. Here he was, though, always standing out of the corner of Kelthyr’s eye, though the other Drow didn’t seem to be paying him any mind. They were tightening his bonds, stripping away his clothes, preparing for this ritual with a terrifying mechanical speed that told him that they were very, very accustomed to these types of ceremonies. He felt that terror setting in until the moment when the gold-masked Drow fully entered his field of vision, the purple eyes behind the mask bearing down upon Kelthyr’s senses, piercing through is fear in an instant.
Kelthyr Imrael. Your lover’s prayers, cried to the heavens at the report of your capture, have been heard. If you wish to live for their sake, if you even wish to be spared the pain of torture, call to me. Something in that violet gaze turned furious, though Kelthyr couldn’t find it in himself to be afraid. I do not ask for your worship, I do not ask for your devotion, but I will ask for your prayer, once and only once. I am Starwind, consort of the goddess of Love, god of heartbreak and comfort. I will deliver you and yours to your loved ones and pay Lolth in the blood of her faithful for those of yours that have already died. If you would live, if you would have those who have fought and bled with you live, if you would see the prayers of those you love answered… call to me, and I will answer.
* * *
He had been in the Underdark countless times, sometimes as conqueror, sometimes as a prisoner, but never as a force of divine retribution. As he watched the captives elves trussed up like animals to be slaughtered, he found his blood surging, his pulse pounding against his temple, that sense of righteous justice he had always been powerless to grant making his fingers twitch toward his swords. He knew exactly how this was going to play out, of course, and he was somewhat sorry for making the elves go through the entire song and dance of this little farce he was going to make of the ceremony, but in this instance, it wouldn’t simply do to grant a miracle in answer to the prayers that brought him here and whisk them away. No, he needed to make an example of this situation in order to draw out the forces behind them. In order to do that… well, he needed those being sacrificed, and they were playing their part beautifully.
On the altar, the priestess was raising the eight-bladed dagger over the heart of the first elf. As her zealous cries echoed through the tunnels, the three elves on the altar cried out the first coherent words they’d spoken in days. Just one word, all but gibberish to the Drow, who could only look on in mild, irritated confusion, but Starwind, the god of heartbreak and comfort, responded to the cry of his name in this instance with immediate, blinding speed, and the strike of steel through the breast of the head priestess.
A complete, shocked silence fell over the temple as the lithe, beautiful elf in the gold mask drew the sword sharply out of her back, sending the late priestess’s body sprawling on the ground in front of the altar. “Breakers of hope!” he thundered, standing before them with his bloodstained sword bared, limned in a brilliant violet fire that lit the temple, “Shatterers of families, of lives, of love! For the pains against their families, your priestess lies dead! For those pains that took the lives of their companions?” He swept his hand aside, his gold lined cloak flaring behind him as he drew his other sword, spots of light flaring into being around the altar where three Eladrin warriors, those celestial fey who called Brightwater home, appeared at his mental summons. “For those pains, you will all suffer in kind.”
The Eladrin drew their blades of golden steel, driving back any Drow who attempted to approach the altar. The real danger, though, lay with their master, that fledgeling god who was unleashing his wrath in the name of those who prayed to him against an evil that he had hated long before he’d been elevated from the ranks of the purely mortal. He lashed out with his blades against all of those who approached them, and struck down monster and Drow alike, but even more terrifying to the Drow was the magic that suddenly assaulted them. Confident in their resistance to magic, the Drow had rarely been assaulted by spells so potent that they had no hope of resisting them, and no ability to overcome them. One priestess suddenly fell back, a spear of doubt lodged so firmly into her psyche that she couldn’t bring herself to attack this apparition of vengeance. A highly decorated soldier fell to his knees, eyes wide and glowing purple, gasping out a list of all of his transgressions, beginning with the most grievous and continuing down, until the heartfire-lit sword separated his head from his neck while he was describing how he’d dissected a living faerie while it hung pinned and squirming to an interrogation table.
The slaughter could only be described as that: slaughter. Some fell to his blades, some fell to the spells that he cast, some simply fell trampled beneath the maddened boots of their foes. The eladrin, now unopposed, had untied the elves held captive on the altar, and as one they disappeared with them, spiriting them away back to the surface while their master continued wreaking havoc upon the crude temple that served as the center of this settlement. As the rank and file soldiers fell victim to a magical chaos, striking out indiscriminately against each other, Arjay decided to offer that final, cutting insult to Lolth. The priestess who had been struck by his magical guilt still stood back, shaken by the spell, obviously unsure of what to do, what was proper. For the poor girl, up was down, down was up, and right was wrong, and given her apparent youth, she may still be in the process of being indoctrinated to the evil of the Drow. This would end one of two ways, and he didn’t know which would enrage the Spider Queen more.
Arjay grabbed her by the silken tunic she wore and hauled her bodily toward the altar, doing nothing to guard her from the full glory of his divine nature. It was nothing that would not be overshadowed by a greater god than he, which at this point was nearly all of them, but it was still, to a mortal, a breathtaking experience. “You have one chance, Maya du Chezzek,” he said, his voice low, his breath even despite the raging battle he’d fought. His voice was like silk against her ear, the voice of a man that you naturally wanted to listen to, who you wanted to agree with you, who had the ability to make you believe anything, to believe in anything. She shuddered in his grasp, but did nothing to struggle away from him, though her body trembled in fear against the altar. “You have helped break lives, break hearts, destroy beauty, create abominations. You have aided a great evil, but you have one chance to renounce it. Renounce it now, of your own will, and I will take you as my own, show you a new way. It will be a harder way, but it will be a good way, a way that will take you out of the darkness and into the light.”
The magic he wove now could, he knew, only take hold if it was truly her will. The enchantment upon her might have given her reason to doubt, but the decision was her own. It was, he knew, the most complicated, difficult decision of her life, and one that he hoped she would make. If she didn’t… well, his sword was ready. “Call to me, Maya. Call to me, or call to your Spider Queen, but call to one of us right now. Be born into the light, or fall into the darkness. Lolth will reward your devotion, I’m sure.” He couldn’t, after all, lie to her. To call her based on a lie would make a lie of anything she did, and he wanted to bring her away from lies.
The priestess’s red eyes were wide, fixed upon his, and she tried to form words, but couldn’t. It was all too much, the moment was too much, the decision was too much. Overwhelmed, she did the only thing she could to articulate the choice she made. There, pressed against the altar of Lolth, she embraced the fledgling god, and accepted the kiss that he pressed upon her lips, his magic burning through her. She cried out into his lips as the Heartfire burned through her being, lighting her heart up with each sin she was asking atonement for, but the effect, in the end, was nothing short of beautiful. To Arjay, whose power washed over her, it was like her soul had been a gem caked in mud and suddenly dipped into a rushing river to reveal the beauty beneath. She fell to her knees at his feet, tears streaming from her eyes, but incredulous laughter coming from her lips as she felt the lightness of her soul after the Atonement spell had finished redeeming her, the accumulated guilt of her life’s actions that she no longer even noticed suddenly just gone.
Somewhere above the temple, below the temple, within the temple, there was a shriek of inhuman fury.
Arjay leaned down, cupping the cheek of his new priestess, drawing her gaze up to him. “It is best for you to be elsewhere, little one. We will talk more soon.” Then, with an effort of his will, she was gone, and his attention was free to settle upon the yochlol that were rising up from the floor of the temple. The masked elf laughed as he flicked the blood from his swords, leaping up atop the altar. “I see I have your attention!” he called out. “My blades are Aria and Requiem! My song is a song of beauty and sadness, of joy and wrath, and you will know the pain of the losses you’ve dealt, Lolth! I am Arjay Lo’Ran, uplifted as the god Starwind, and you are the first that my faithful beg me strike out against!” Then, with a mocking laugh, he dove from his perch, striking out with the holy swords against the demons who rushed to swarm him.
In the little Drow outpost, those who entered against their will always regretted doing so alive. Such had been the way of things since the camp had been founded, such had been maintained in the centuries since this lookout posting had continued. There were few creature comforts afforded to the Drow posted here, and few diversions from the dangerous intrigues that came part and parcel with being Drow. The only thing that they could really unite together on was the capture of surface races. The warriors who captured them gained favor for the successful capture, the wizards got to study any of the new toys that were stripped from their captives, and the priestesses? Well, the priestesses had their attention diverted from the men of the camp for a few days per captive, and that benefited everyone equally.
The captive party was in a sorry state, and Kelthyr Imrael knew that those of his party who’d succumbed to the torture they’d been put through were the lucky ones. What, exactly, did it mean to be sacrificed to Lolth? The priestesses who tortured them claimed that it gave Lolth their soul for all eternity, but that couldn’t be true, could it? Could a simple act of murder on an altar really steal his soul from its rightful place in Arvandor? His faith told him that it wasn’t so, but he couldn’t shake that fear, that horror that he might be forever separated, even in death, from his family, from his gods, from all of the elves that had come before him. He wanted to get out of here. He needed to get out of here, and he needed to get his friends away as well, those who still lived, at least. There was no escape, though, was there. They were all tied to this altar, and the familiar faces of the high-ranking Drow surrounded them, leering at them. All that they needed was the arrival of the ranking priestess, and the sacrifice would begin.
None of this, though, kept him from noticing the strange Drow in the gold domino mask.
This one… hadn’t been at any of the other sessions of torture, hadn’t been in the party that caught them, didn’t really seem to have any place among them that he’d been able to discern. Here he was, though, always standing out of the corner of Kelthyr’s eye, though the other Drow didn’t seem to be paying him any mind. They were tightening his bonds, stripping away his clothes, preparing for this ritual with a terrifying mechanical speed that told him that they were very, very accustomed to these types of ceremonies. He felt that terror setting in until the moment when the gold-masked Drow fully entered his field of vision, the purple eyes behind the mask bearing down upon Kelthyr’s senses, piercing through is fear in an instant.
Kelthyr Imrael. Your lover’s prayers, cried to the heavens at the report of your capture, have been heard. If you wish to live for their sake, if you even wish to be spared the pain of torture, call to me. Something in that violet gaze turned furious, though Kelthyr couldn’t find it in himself to be afraid. I do not ask for your worship, I do not ask for your devotion, but I will ask for your prayer, once and only once. I am Starwind, consort of the goddess of Love, god of heartbreak and comfort. I will deliver you and yours to your loved ones and pay Lolth in the blood of her faithful for those of yours that have already died. If you would live, if you would have those who have fought and bled with you live, if you would see the prayers of those you love answered… call to me, and I will answer.
* * *
He had been in the Underdark countless times, sometimes as conqueror, sometimes as a prisoner, but never as a force of divine retribution. As he watched the captives elves trussed up like animals to be slaughtered, he found his blood surging, his pulse pounding against his temple, that sense of righteous justice he had always been powerless to grant making his fingers twitch toward his swords. He knew exactly how this was going to play out, of course, and he was somewhat sorry for making the elves go through the entire song and dance of this little farce he was going to make of the ceremony, but in this instance, it wouldn’t simply do to grant a miracle in answer to the prayers that brought him here and whisk them away. No, he needed to make an example of this situation in order to draw out the forces behind them. In order to do that… well, he needed those being sacrificed, and they were playing their part beautifully.
On the altar, the priestess was raising the eight-bladed dagger over the heart of the first elf. As her zealous cries echoed through the tunnels, the three elves on the altar cried out the first coherent words they’d spoken in days. Just one word, all but gibberish to the Drow, who could only look on in mild, irritated confusion, but Starwind, the god of heartbreak and comfort, responded to the cry of his name in this instance with immediate, blinding speed, and the strike of steel through the breast of the head priestess.
A complete, shocked silence fell over the temple as the lithe, beautiful elf in the gold mask drew the sword sharply out of her back, sending the late priestess’s body sprawling on the ground in front of the altar. “Breakers of hope!” he thundered, standing before them with his bloodstained sword bared, limned in a brilliant violet fire that lit the temple, “Shatterers of families, of lives, of love! For the pains against their families, your priestess lies dead! For those pains that took the lives of their companions?” He swept his hand aside, his gold lined cloak flaring behind him as he drew his other sword, spots of light flaring into being around the altar where three Eladrin warriors, those celestial fey who called Brightwater home, appeared at his mental summons. “For those pains, you will all suffer in kind.”
The Eladrin drew their blades of golden steel, driving back any Drow who attempted to approach the altar. The real danger, though, lay with their master, that fledgeling god who was unleashing his wrath in the name of those who prayed to him against an evil that he had hated long before he’d been elevated from the ranks of the purely mortal. He lashed out with his blades against all of those who approached them, and struck down monster and Drow alike, but even more terrifying to the Drow was the magic that suddenly assaulted them. Confident in their resistance to magic, the Drow had rarely been assaulted by spells so potent that they had no hope of resisting them, and no ability to overcome them. One priestess suddenly fell back, a spear of doubt lodged so firmly into her psyche that she couldn’t bring herself to attack this apparition of vengeance. A highly decorated soldier fell to his knees, eyes wide and glowing purple, gasping out a list of all of his transgressions, beginning with the most grievous and continuing down, until the heartfire-lit sword separated his head from his neck while he was describing how he’d dissected a living faerie while it hung pinned and squirming to an interrogation table.
The slaughter could only be described as that: slaughter. Some fell to his blades, some fell to the spells that he cast, some simply fell trampled beneath the maddened boots of their foes. The eladrin, now unopposed, had untied the elves held captive on the altar, and as one they disappeared with them, spiriting them away back to the surface while their master continued wreaking havoc upon the crude temple that served as the center of this settlement. As the rank and file soldiers fell victim to a magical chaos, striking out indiscriminately against each other, Arjay decided to offer that final, cutting insult to Lolth. The priestess who had been struck by his magical guilt still stood back, shaken by the spell, obviously unsure of what to do, what was proper. For the poor girl, up was down, down was up, and right was wrong, and given her apparent youth, she may still be in the process of being indoctrinated to the evil of the Drow. This would end one of two ways, and he didn’t know which would enrage the Spider Queen more.
Arjay grabbed her by the silken tunic she wore and hauled her bodily toward the altar, doing nothing to guard her from the full glory of his divine nature. It was nothing that would not be overshadowed by a greater god than he, which at this point was nearly all of them, but it was still, to a mortal, a breathtaking experience. “You have one chance, Maya du Chezzek,” he said, his voice low, his breath even despite the raging battle he’d fought. His voice was like silk against her ear, the voice of a man that you naturally wanted to listen to, who you wanted to agree with you, who had the ability to make you believe anything, to believe in anything. She shuddered in his grasp, but did nothing to struggle away from him, though her body trembled in fear against the altar. “You have helped break lives, break hearts, destroy beauty, create abominations. You have aided a great evil, but you have one chance to renounce it. Renounce it now, of your own will, and I will take you as my own, show you a new way. It will be a harder way, but it will be a good way, a way that will take you out of the darkness and into the light.”
The magic he wove now could, he knew, only take hold if it was truly her will. The enchantment upon her might have given her reason to doubt, but the decision was her own. It was, he knew, the most complicated, difficult decision of her life, and one that he hoped she would make. If she didn’t… well, his sword was ready. “Call to me, Maya. Call to me, or call to your Spider Queen, but call to one of us right now. Be born into the light, or fall into the darkness. Lolth will reward your devotion, I’m sure.” He couldn’t, after all, lie to her. To call her based on a lie would make a lie of anything she did, and he wanted to bring her away from lies.
The priestess’s red eyes were wide, fixed upon his, and she tried to form words, but couldn’t. It was all too much, the moment was too much, the decision was too much. Overwhelmed, she did the only thing she could to articulate the choice she made. There, pressed against the altar of Lolth, she embraced the fledgling god, and accepted the kiss that he pressed upon her lips, his magic burning through her. She cried out into his lips as the Heartfire burned through her being, lighting her heart up with each sin she was asking atonement for, but the effect, in the end, was nothing short of beautiful. To Arjay, whose power washed over her, it was like her soul had been a gem caked in mud and suddenly dipped into a rushing river to reveal the beauty beneath. She fell to her knees at his feet, tears streaming from her eyes, but incredulous laughter coming from her lips as she felt the lightness of her soul after the Atonement spell had finished redeeming her, the accumulated guilt of her life’s actions that she no longer even noticed suddenly just gone.
Somewhere above the temple, below the temple, within the temple, there was a shriek of inhuman fury.
Arjay leaned down, cupping the cheek of his new priestess, drawing her gaze up to him. “It is best for you to be elsewhere, little one. We will talk more soon.” Then, with an effort of his will, she was gone, and his attention was free to settle upon the yochlol that were rising up from the floor of the temple. The masked elf laughed as he flicked the blood from his swords, leaping up atop the altar. “I see I have your attention!” he called out. “My blades are Aria and Requiem! My song is a song of beauty and sadness, of joy and wrath, and you will know the pain of the losses you’ve dealt, Lolth! I am Arjay Lo’Ran, uplifted as the god Starwind, and you are the first that my faithful beg me strike out against!” Then, with a mocking laugh, he dove from his perch, striking out with the holy swords against the demons who rushed to swarm him.