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Dark Son Rising
Posted: 26 Oct 2006 06:34 PM |
Muriel looked upon Artinam sourly. He was so lacking in imagination, she thought. His mind didn't allow for deviation from schedule, for the vagaries that one's environment produces, for the fact that they were dealing with a human being and always had been.
She supposed that was why Artinam was her dog, rather than she his. He could follow orders to the letter, but expected that all others would do the same. 'Normal' people had emotions, and motivations that went deeper than a perverse desire to defile others in the name of your God. Artinam didn't.
"I entered the Dream last night," he said, "and I saw him. He's dispatched the fallen one, but he's not heading to the City. It's as though he's avoiding the place."
"Have patience," Muriel replied, suppressing her irritation. "Its pull will become irresistible, his arrival inevitable."
Artinam made no attempt to hide his anger and frustration. "I gave over a good portion of my adult life to this...project!" he spat, his fleshy jowls rippling with the force of his emotion and his sallow face reddening.
"As did I," Muriel replied distantly, not looking at the man, but absently fingering the 'smile lines' that had recently appeared to frame her lips.
It was a year ago that she'd sent the dark son away, the fire of the betrayed burning in his eyes. Artinam had worked tirelessly to elevate the man's genesis to an evil, to sow the seeds of self-loathing, and to induce patricide, and she simply built upon that foundation.
She'd known from the start what the ultimate goal was, had known it with greater clarity and foresight than Artinam, in fact, and had poured her very essence into it. When the dark son left, she had sent Artinam away, returned to the cave, and wept. The depraved will never understand, she now reflected, that, for the rest of us, in order to be able to hate, we have to be able to love.
The sound of air being forced through fat-narrowed breathing passages brought her back from the memory, and made her look resolutely at her comrade.
"Perhaps we should offer him some...guidance," she finally said. "Send Shadowkeeper to him."
Artinam nodded, clearly pleased, while Muriel pondered the poetry of it all. Shadowkeeper had, in her way, set the ox-cart in motion all those years back, and now she would return to guide it.
Some time later, the woman watched with bittersweet satisfaction as the sleek black beast padded off into the distance.
It would begin soon enough. |
ELVES! |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 29 Oct 2006 02:19 AM |
The dark son stood looking down on the trotting horses of the plains, magnificent creatures with slick brown coats and rippling muscles. He watched for a long time as they pranced and ran, panicking at unseen dangers, running to safety, eating, protecting their young. He finally drew his gaze from the beasts that seemed so oblivious to the ever-falling snow, and looked upon the dead bandits splayed out at his feet.
Killing them had been easy. They’d attacked him first, and had brooked no negotiation. What was coming would be hard, despite the necessity of it. Muriel had, on more than one occasion, explained the dichotomy to him, and her words, spoken in that oddly high pitched and almost child-like voice, echoed in his mind. “The important acts, the truly meaningful ones, are always the hardest.”
He’d recently learned the truth of that. Though he’d had every reason he could imagine to want the man dead, he’d had no desire to dispatch his mentor. The man had loved him, had given freely of all the accumulated knowledge of an imperfect life, looked upon him, with sad, apologetic eyes, and begged his forgiveness for the past transgression.
The dark son had forgiven him, which made his final business with the man all the more difficult. His mentor, the man Artinam referred to as the fallen one, had taught him perhaps a hundred ways to kill a man. The child of shadow chose a quick and simple one.
Trying to swallow past the lump in his throat, he placed his sword against his sleeping mentor’s throat, applied pressure, and sliced across it with economical, fluid, grace.
The eyes of the fallen one came open one last time, a wet gurgle came from his throat, and a warm crimson pool began to form on his bedroll, framing his head in a halo of death. Though he spilled no tears for the dead man, the child of shadow felt the pain of loss for a time, until he regained his wits and recalled Muriel’s lessons. Remaining in the waking world but teetering on the edge of the Dream, he visualized a void, and then allowed the void to swallow his feelings. Soon, with military efficiency, he was digging a deep grave.
A simple rock, a short prayer, and flowers from a hawthorn tree were all that marked the passing of the man. The dark son had been tested, and had passed. The time had now come for him to rejoin the lands of men. |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 29 Oct 2006 02:20 AM |
The dark son worked his way south, walking in the shadows of the oaks, and trying to stay downwind of the bears. His mentor could have easily faced the creatures, but he could only defeat them if he managed to slink up and slit their throats in their sleep, he thought, with mirthless irony.
The threats gradually decreased as he made his way further south, though the accusatory caw of the ravens was something he’d never get used to. As he made his way through the relative safety of the southern forest, his mind travelled back a year, to when he travelled this forest in the opposite direction, Shadowkeeper protecting him.
Muriel had sent the dark son on the journey that would take him to his mentor. She had told him the truth, he had angrily denied it, and she had sent him to learn of it for himself. He’d left her, eyes stinging, heart pounding, his saviour’s betrayal searing wounds into the fiber of his ego – his very notion of self.
Through three years of intense torture by that fat cretin, the dark son had maintained that he’d taken the wrong man, that the punishment was misplaced. Artinam ignored his pleas, inflicting suffering on the dark son that would both shape his being and haunt him until the end of his days.
Then Muriel stepped in and saved him. She arrived one day and simply ordered Artinam to stop. They had argued forcefully about his punishments, but her arguments prevailed, and the child of shadow had been released. She’d gone on to teach him a great deal about life, death, shadow, and the Dream.
Then she told him that the punishment had been earned.
When he denied it, she gave him a name, and a place.
His first stop had been that accursed room. He’d stayed there a few days, for what reason he couldn’t remember now, but he didn’t sleep, so troubled was he by the accusation that the lie of his existence had been consummated in the bed on which he laid.
As he travelled the city making enquiries, he noticed something curious - nobody recognised him. Only after he’d had an opportunity to use the bathing facilities did he understand why. His skin and eyes had darkened, his features had somehow hardened, and something more, that he couldn’t quite place his finger on, had changed, something in his demeanour and movement that Muriel would have attributed to Shadowkeeper’s influence.
Once he was around people other than Artinam and Muriel, he noticed one other thing – his voice had changed, and its magic was gone. He never acknowledged Muriel’s part in the transformation, but the dark son swore on that day that he’d have his revenge on Artinam, and that it would be slow and painful.
After a few days of asking questions, dispensing gold, and sorting through replies, the dark son had garnered the most likely location of his future mentor.
And he left the city. More importantly, he left that room.
The sound of a twig snapping brought him out of his memories. Horses were panicking ahead, and men - archers, mages and warriors, by the look of them, were attacking. He carefully slunk ahead and picked the bandits off from the shade of a cherry tree one by one.
Some time later, he stood at the top of a hill overlooking both the horses and his fallen foes. |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 31 Oct 2006 02:51 AM |
She paced back and forth outside the Inn, her anger abating as each twenty yard stretch of earth passed underfoot. The dark son had originally been her project, but her body had put almost immediate limitations on what she could do. In a past incarnation, she was a raven-haired beauty who would have taken the dark son as Muriel did; in her current incarnation, cursed as she was with this abominable body, she thought, she could scarcely push him on.
All that time back, she had merely found him, of course, and had dragged his broken, dying form to the nearest house of shadow, a cave inhabited by the depraved priest Artinam, who had, himself, been forced to flee his parish when, a mere fortnight back, a talkative young child gave his father a full accounting of the duties of an altar boy.
Before being called back to push him forward, the last that Shadowkeeper had seen of the dark son had been the first few days of Artinam’s ‘tender’ attention. The confident, headstrong man had surprised her, had been such a contrast to the broken creature she’d last seen, that she had begun to question whether she could push him forward.
As Artinam suspected, he was reluctant, and had asked her what the rush was when she pressed him, explaining that whatever he did was for him alone, and not for –her- God. Growling that she’d not accept his blasphemy, she threatened him, and he threatened back. She left angrily, pacing around the inn he’d entered, suspecting that she could no longer defeat him, and that free will, real or perceived, would destroy their plans.
Then, as he mingled with his own kind, Shadowkeeper smelled the change in the child of shadow. She knew there was a lure, though she found herself surprised at what it was; she had assumed Artinam had beaten that out of him. She relaxed and laid lazily on the cold ground, deciding her work was done. The dark son would go not because of her urging, but because of a single, immutable fact.
He was a man. |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 02 Nov 2006 03:48 AM |
The dark son returned from whence he’d come and laid, staring skyward, under the canopy of the forest, yellowing leaves around him, more of them gently falling from the heights that the elms and maples reached to. It was not safe to lay here and enter the Dream, not completely safe anyway. The animals ignored his presence, but cunning minds sometimes mingle with the fauna. He knew that better than most.
Shadowkeeper was there though, out there somewhere, watching him. She wanted him alive, irrespective of his feelings about her, so he said a short prayer to someone else's God, closed his eyes, and soon fell into a deep slumber. With ease, he opened the portal from dream to Dream, and found himself in a large open-air amphitheatre.
Years back Muriel had shown him that a part of the Dream can be taken for yourself and shaped. It was intuitive, and, though one could be shown that it can be done, one could not be shown how to do it. One either had the talent, or didn’t. The dark son did, in spades.
He’d painstakingly constructed the amphitheatre, placed the stars seen from North Vives in the sky, ensured the oaken hardwood of the stage came from the heart of the illusory trees that were used to construct it. This was his place within the Dream, and as his confidence grew, he had begun to jealously guard it, placing illusions around the shimmering folds that linked it to the rest of the Dream, and placing horrific mind-traps that would send those who stepped through the folds unguided out of the Dream and into their own personal nightmares.
Frowning, he noticed that one had been disarmed. He walked up to it warily, bending to one knee and placing his hands above the broken device. Although the man had used a clever trick to mask it, he had left his footprint – the dark son merely had to see beyond the nightmare, fantasy, and daydream to find it. That Artinam had left a particularly lurid fantasy involving a woman galled the dark son. The misdirection was far too obvious, the weapon far too blunt.
The fat fiend had been spying on him, the man thought, his mood souring. Shadowkeeper’s arrival was likely a result of Artinam’s spying, and Shadowkeeper did nothing without Muriel’s acquiescence, which meant she knew what Artinam had been up to. Though he supposed he had lived with those two long enough to expect them to act in concert, the betrayal upset him. He had spent many a night in the comfortable bedchamber behind the stage with Muriel, while his real self (real - what was real?) lay sleeping on the hard earth of their dank cave.
On this night, he had meant to go to Muriel, to the near-perfect replica of the sanctum behind the Seven Sisters and the ever-present smell of lilac and lavender, but the broken trap stayed him. Artinam and Muriel were all about destroying and rebuilding, about trust and betrayal. Perhaps they had created him, but they didn’t own him. Though he craved a woman’s company, on this night more than most, the dark son put all thoughts of Muriel out of his mind and commenced work on a new trap.
When he was done, some immeasurable amount of time later, he looked upon his creation with satisfaction. Though it repulsed him to do so, he entered it and played through the nightmare to ensure it contained no logic flaws...
...a cherubic boy smiles nervously to the viewer, perfect teeth showing a perfect smile, trusting eyes showing just a glint of burgeoning fear. The boy backs away from the former viewer (now partaker), the scent of fear growing, pupils dilating; the partaker (if he has the right perversions) becomes excited, losing control of rationality, and chases after, to a deserted alleyway in a crowded, dirty city. Anticipation overwhelms all other thought…
…then, a change. The power that the defiler holds over the child is reversed with frightening speed. Horns sprout, fangs grow, and a tail begins to snake from the base of his back to the ground, as the clothing formerly encapsulating the victim is shredded to reveal the avenger, a twelve-foot-tall red fiend with a vicious sword, at which point the virtual trapdoor springs underfoot and takes the intruder from Dream to nightmare...
Just before making his rounds to embed the new trap with the others, a thought occurred to the dark son. He modified the trap, adding a simple snare and anchor. How fitting it would be if the nightmare actually killed Artinam, a fate he’d wished upon himself on too many occasions to count during the years the man had subjected him to that living nightmare.
With that task complete, he carefully embedded the trap on ‘his side’ of the folds, making it a living part of the other traps, there whether he was or not. He then sat down on the stage and closed his eyes in meditation, thinking about the task to come. He focused on the children, always the children, rather than their mothers. He could do this, would do this, he told himself, over and over again, all the while a mantra beating against his unconscious mind like a hammer on a drum: “the sins of the mother visit the son.”
After a time, he relaxed his grip on his mind, letting it wander, and the recurring dream of the recent past took him, his mind’s eye seeing his re-genesis through the prism of imperfect memory.
Then, an alarm. Something tugged at him, pulling him from his bitter reverie. There was another intruder.
Her footprint was alien, one he’d never experienced before, and after he recovered from the initial shock of having had two intruders in so short a time, he realized that she was not in fact seeking entrance to his domain. She had found a window to his world, rather than a door, and was watching him – had, in fact, been watching him for some time. And there was a presence with her, a powerful one, leaving a searing hole in the fabric of dreamy shadow, rather than a footprint.
Curiosity pulled him toward the window – toward the voyeur. |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 02 Nov 2006 03:49 AM |
Swinset sat at her usual table by the door of the Mask, taking a long swallow of ale and following it with a drag from her pipe. Half a lifetime of smoking the hin weed had given her a wrinkled face, a perpetual cough, and a deep voice. The ale had blessed her with a puffy red nose, varicose veins, and a very manly paunch.
She didn't care. Beauty was for the young, working the phlegm from her throat was a not-altogether unpleasant distraction, and she liked her voice. The weed calmed her and the ale made her happy.
She was a barfly, a nightly regular at the Mask. A long time ago, she had been the happy wife of a wealthy merchant, but he'd left her after five barren years of wedlock, and went on to marry and divorce a series of equally barren women. Swinset didn't dwell on it. He was a nice fellow, had always treated her well, and it was natural to want children. When he left, she didn't feel much like taking up with another man, so she took up with the bottle, and had managed to keep herself in ale and tobacco for the last quarter-century by doing odd jobs and throwing a few lucky pairs of dice.
It was a life, and, as Swinset liked to tell Lefty, Johnny, and Breanna, "ifn yer always 'appy, 'ow does yer know ta 'preciate it?" It was a topic they tended to agree on, unlike religion, philosophy, or "jus' what's hep'nen in thet queer City o' Midar."
She had the table to herself at the moment; Breanna was off using the ladies room, something she had recently begun doing at her seat with irritating frequency, while Johnny and Lefty had run off to watch a couple young fellows play a game of knuckles.
While she sat enjoying all the luxuries of life she'd ever want, Swinset heard banging on the door. Odd, she thought, the door's open all the time. At a tavern, who knocks?
More banging, and this time it didn't sound like a fist knocking, but more like someone pounding the oak sheeting with a blacksmith's hammer.
"Come in!" she shouted toward the door.
There was no answer, and the knocking stopped. After counting to seventeen (an arduous process that took her about two minutes), Swinset shuffled to the door and slowly pushed it open.
The first sight that greeted her was the other side of the door, the side that she was not accustomed to seeing. Unlike the smoothly oiled inside face of the door, the outside face was worn and blistered, a multitude of old, rusty nails hanging on for purchase until the salt and rain worried them out. The three fresh nails on the door stood out from this background, as did the still-dry parchment that hung in torn corners from each.
The second sight that greeted her was the woman laying on the ground, one arm wrapped in a bloody, makeshift bandage, a serene look on her visage, sightless blue eyes staring up at the lightning flashes that punctuated a stormy night in Port Royale.
The dark son had arrived. |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 05 Nov 2006 03:20 AM |
Earlier…
Priya ran to the next door, her thighs burning, her wounded arm screaming pain, and her good arm clutching the scrollcase. She was single-minded in her purpose, and knew that she’d give her life for it, had known from almost the first moment she’d seen his shadowy form in the Dream.
Something had drawn her sleeping self to the land of shadow that night, from a dream to the Dream. She unlocked the portal with a mental turn of a series of geometric tumblers that seemed to have only one logical position (She was sure that wasn’t the right adjective, but couldn’t find another to fit). Priya found Her on the other side, looking from an impossible distance upon one that belonged to Him; something told her there was no time to show Her the reverence She deserved; the tear in Her eye confirmed that feeling.
She pointed towards the dark son as the tear rolled down Her cheek, and Priya immediately saw it - a forest of unmarked graves had sprouted around him. The tear left her Mistress’ cheek and fell, in slow motion, to the ground. In that tear, Priya saw Her sorrow for the women, the orphans, and for Priya herself.
She did not ask such sacrifice of Her follower, an ordinary woman who had always had the gift to touch the land of shadow, but who had always resisted its lure, until now, until need and destiny called. What Priya saw would make her leave behind her husband and children, forever, so that she might save others from her own fate, and hold back the darkening shadows to come.
As Priya watched from above, the dark son began travelling without moving, drawing backwards into memory. In the memory, the Lord of Shadow whispered in his ear. He was more firmly rooted in the Dream then, teetering on the knife-edge between life and death. If only he’d been brave, she lamented inwardly. Had he chosen death, he’d have taken his place among the Voices in the Wind, and spared so many, including her own husband and sons, so much sorrow.
But he’d not.
He’d chosen life, and the Dark Lord had granted it, His minions beginning the process of subtly directing His new servant, of revealing truth slowly, laying the foundation to make an unswerving weapon that would kill not for his Master, but for himself. When the dark son was almost ready, the shameful allegation was made, and it was vehemently denied. His betrayer’s rebuttal was to point him in the direction of his father.
With a blue flash of light, Priya watched the man’s world move forward, bringing the Dream, and her, with it. His father did not deny the truth of the allegation, causing the last of the son’s defenses against the transformation to crumble. From afar, Priya could feel his shame, loss, and fury, and at that moment he took a new Father. The Dark Lord used the son’s emotions to shape His vassal, his mission becoming clear without being voiced.
Priya gasped as she felt his emotions wither and be replaced by a void, a void that worked infectiously on her and began to sap her of her own feelings. With no small effort, she pushed back the void and tears came. Tears for the shadowy son.
He would do it to punish sin, and never question the rightness of it, never equivocate between gradiants thereof, never question whether the punishment fit the crime, a punishment that went well beyond death.
Priya had learned all that she needed, and now tried to escape the Dream, but the shadows held her. She was looking in on the dark son’s domain, and once he sensed her, he set an elaborate snare, a shadow variant of the finger puzzles he’d once seen an overseas trader selling. The more she looked, the more she drank in his (un)reality, the more ensconced she became in the snare. Her Mistress noticed his searching gaze, as did Priya, but both were powerless to hide her. In an instant, the dark son stood in front of Priya, memorizing her features. She tried to pull herself from the Dream, but he’d caught her, and with each frantic pull against the snare around her legs, she became more stuck, more leaden. The Sister left the Dream, not wanting to face the Lord of Shadow in His domain, but she left Priya with the gift of deep foresight, a gift that would imbue her with the courage to do what she must. Priya stood tall in the face of her hunter, wearing only sad compassion.
“Please don’t,” she whispered.
“I must,” he replied, looking puzzled. “Why must you interfere?”
“Because they do not deserve this fate,” she replied, clear-eyed and determined.
“Their sins…”, he began.
She stopped him with the clear, strong voice of a young mother. “It’s a lie. Your perception has been twisted.”
His eyebrows rose in unison, beckoning her to continue.
She opened her mouth to speak, to reply to that look that suddenly yearned for justification, for an argument to hold on to, to point him on an alternate path, but He would not allow it, and Priya was ejected from the Dream, panting and filled with sadness, but resolute in her duty.
She left early the next morning, after a tearful farewell for her beloved Ephraim and her sons Levi and Noah. She’d not lied when she said she’d be back in a fortnight. She had simply omitted to mention that it would be in a pine box in the back of an ox-cart. As much as she wanted to explain why she had to do this, it would endanger them to know. Better that they think she fell to a common thief.
The ordinary woman moved at extraordinary speed, never stopping for sleep, barely eating, and rarely drinking. Her body, sought after in her youth, the fount of nourishment for her suckling sons, and the only temple her husband would ever bow to, served one purpose now. It needed to transport a message – a warning – ahead of the dark son.
He decided not to follow her. He knew where she was headed, and he was a trained assassin, not a fool. The farmer’s wife might not be able to buy passage by boat, but he could. Once in the North, he took meals, rested, and prepared. After a day, he went slowly and cautiously to the desert and readied his ambush, careful to keep the void close at hand.
As she moved north, miraculously unmolested by the denizens of the desert, some feeling, a sixth sense that had visited her in this last week of her life, told her that the dark son was near – watching. Unfortunately, she was late to heed its call, and a thick shafted arrow sunk deep into the flesh and bone of the upper portion of her left arm. As she screamed in agony and briefly fell to her knees, a powerful sandstorm appeared between the dark one and her.
She’d been given time, though likely little of it, she surmised, so, screaming fury at the skies and drawing strength from the memory of the pain-ecstasy of the the birth of her sons, she reached her right hand behind her left tricep and pulled with all her strength, dislodging the barbed arrow from bone with an audible crunch. She then turned the arrow slightly and pushed it through more of her flesh until, blood now spurting from her arm to the rhythm of her beating heart, the barbed end broke through, bringing a sickly-looking amount of meat with it.
Having no way to break it off, she pulled the entire arrow through her arm, feathers and all, leaving behind slivers and detritus. She knew that would sow the seeds of infection, and if time had permitted, she would have cleaned the wound. Time didn’t.
A strip of cloth torn hastily from her shirt stopped the bleeding and she was off again, the dark son held back behind the sandstorms that now followed in her wake as she made her way north.
She arrived in Buckshire sunburned, bleeding and breathless, but pushed on relentlessly. The wind could not hold back the shadowy man indefinitely, and when dusk came, in a bare three hours, He would be stronger. She begged for parchment and a quill from a wealthy mage and, thirty minutes later, managed to get a fertile dwarf to transport her to her final destination for nothing more than the earnest promise that it was vitally important that she get there quickly.
A few hours into a soggy evening, as she pinned her warning to the door of the Broken Mask tavern with nails scrounged from a sympathetic merchant, a figure emerged from the shadows behind her. He stood there, sword drawn, engulfed in the same melancholy of inevitability as a man walking to the gallows.
A whispered apology stumbled from his lips, his hoarse voice thick with regret.
She dropped the rock she was using to pound in the nails, swallowed, and nodded.
“Please,” she said, “my husband and sons will see me before I am placed in the ground.”
He made no reply, placing his left hand firmly but gently on her left shoulder, holding her from behind. In a quick motion, he deftly thrust his sword into her back and through her heart. The organ would cease to pump, and there would be little blood lost. On the day of Priya’s funeral, her face would look skyward with radiant, lingering beauty, invoking the happiest of memories in those she’d loved most.
On this night, though, it was a vision only of sadness.
The dark son removed his sword and wiped it carefully on a small corner of Priya’s shirt, before ripping the warning from the door. He’d already found two similar messages, and he would need to quickly find the rest.
The skies darkened over the slums and rain began to fall in earnest. Covering himself in his cloak and melting into the shadows, the dark son began the work of fulfilling his destiny. |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 10 Nov 2006 03:52 AM |
Shadowkeeper paced back and forth, staring at the wooden gate, snarling angrily as the sniveling attendant ran for the guards.
Nothing was going right. Her guidance went ignored and he kept her from him in the Dream. She was not the trusted companion Muriel wanted her to be.
He had lost his way, but it was not –her- fault, she thought, with a mixture of fear and anger. Muriel had wanted to make him “whole” after Artinam’s depravity, and she’d done so. Now she was reaping what she’d sown.
The problem, Shadowkeeper thought furiously, was that –she- would get blamed for it, not Muriel. With the few tools she had in her arsenal, she would have to act.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Muriel chewed her nails as she watched Artinam’s corpulent form amble towards the sturdy oak door that separated her quarters from the rest of the cave. The door, and a few other accoutrements that made the cave almost liveable, were a testament to the two sides of Artinam.
One day he’d come back with a grey dwarf who’d nearly got himself killed hunting for a vein of mithril, and and had quickly collared, charmed, and enslaved him. The dwarf built that door, built some rudimentary plumbing, and raised the passages so that Muriel and Artinam didn’t have to hunch down to walk to the common room.
He would have been a faithful servant long enough to make a fireplace, some beds, and, by the love of her Master, a bloody bath, she thought, but Artinam was hungry, always hungry. He started to take the dwarf, which, unbeknowst to him, broke the spell. Within a week, the dwarf hung himself.
A dwarf, yet, she thought with disgust.
Now, Artinam had become a problem for –her-, a problem she could do little about. He wished to be more “important”, closer to their Master. He wished to have in eternity the fruits which he tasted so freely in life.
And she stood in his way.
He blamed her for the delays, as did Shadowkeeper, she suspected, and the figurative “long-knives” were being sharpened.
Muriel was helpless to do anything but trust that her work had succeeded. She understood people. She understood –men-, normal ones anyway. She also understood, however, that if she had got this wrong, she could only hope that her Master would be as lenient with her as He’d been with Shadowkeeper.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Artinam wasn’t sure what to think. On the one hand, he was certain blame would fall on Muriel, or possibly Shadowkeeper. He would be certain to point out the flaws in their actions, if he was asked, especially Muriel’s, and slit her throat and take command.
He had argued vehemently that the wagon had lost its wheels when the dark son had left the zealot’s body outsider the tavern; Muriel had calmly replied that she didn’t fit the profile, as though their assassin was supposed to be able to pick and choose what to do with the dead.
“Make him kill –her-!” Artinam had yelled, a prospect that, judging by the sudden tightening of her lips, was already being considered by Muriel.
Her quiet reply spoke volumes of the weaknesses of her plan. “I can’t –make- him do anything,” she said. “He is stronger in the Dream than you or I, and he’s shut us both out. Are you going to march into the City and talk to him?”
Of course he wasn’t, Artinam thought sourly. Seven years was a long time, but all it would take was one of the boys or one of their fathers…
Anyway, he disputed her assertions about the man’s power in the Dream. Artinam had snuck in unnoticed just a few days ago, he thought. He would go back and teach the dark son just who gave orders, just who his master was.
And maybe He’d be watching.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shadowkeeper crept through the shadows of a dark night in a dank city, staring up at the open windows on the second floor of the newly-built and freshly painted orphanage.
The dark son needed a push. |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 15 Nov 2006 03:12 AM |
The dark son sat in the abandoned house, turning the small shoe over and over in his hands, an image forming in his mind’s eye of the child that must have worn it. He had a duty to fulfill, and it didn’t involve making friends, assaulting beasts, or assuaging his black heart.
Shadowkeeper had made her point.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Muriel woke to the sound of Artinam’s panicked screams, her own mildly agreeable dream reluctantly left behind. She groggily stepped into a robe and hurried down one corridor, through the common room and down another corridor to Artinam’s chamber, then pushed aside the red velvet tapestry that hung in his doorway and lightly trotted toward his bed.
The inside of his room looked like a small temple. Ornate miniature candelabras sat on cloth table covers on small rough-hewn wooden tables at either side of the entrance, and a rudimentary raised dais had been carved into the limestone at the opposite end of the small chamber. Two narrow pews sat between door and altar.
To the left was Artinam’s ‘cot’, a solid slab of granite with a hay-filled futon on top. Terrified wails rose from deep within the throat of the puffy form laying upon it.
Ever wary of her comrade, Muriel called on the power of shadow to attune her eyes to the darkness before advancing to Artinam’s side. If this was a ruse, she wanted a fighting chance against the repugnant creature.
The veins protruding from his forehead and foaming spittle dribbling from his mouth suggested that, if he was tricking her, it was a d*mn good one; the acrid smell of urine that soon tickled her nostrils put all thoughts of deceit from her mind. Something had caused Artinam to become mired in the quicksand of an inescapable nightmare.
She crept forward and placed her hand on his bare, sweat-soaked chest.
The fat, diseased organ beneath her touch beat at an astounding rate, stripping plaque from the walls of his arteries and setting in motion the perfect conditions to either stop the frenetic beating for good, or starve his brain of sustenance. The only action required of Muriel to see out one of these eventualities was inaction.
She took a step back, smiled, and waited.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Geography was a notoriously dicey concept in the Dream, as the shadow world perpetually formed and re-formed as Dreamers, consciously or unconsciously, planted the seeds of new nightmares and new fantasies. As a result, navigating the Dream was about knowing –where- and –to whom- you wanted to go, rather than knowing how to get there. For Artinam, this meant sniffing out what Dreamers generally referred to as a footprint.
His three years as sole tormentor to the shadow child had attuned him to that one’s footprint: fear, indecision, protectiveness, hate, vengeance. The smell and taste was unique, and, despite the alterations in his psyche that Muriel introduced, was still much the same as it had been four years back. Artinam never had difficulty finding the general location of the dark son’s domain.
Getting in, however, was the difficult part. The dark son cloaked the portals in a uniquely murky and impenetrable series of shadows, a defense that he suspected was far too opaque for either Muriel or Shadowkeeper. Artinam, though, was patient when he needed to be, and knew the trick of it. He pointed his eyes on a line perpendicular to the curved edge of the spot of blackness that he believed housed the dark son’s domain, and then relaxed them, letting all the noise and action of juvenile Dreamers’ night-time visitations pass him by. He saw nothing and everything, allowed all in and filtered nothing out.
Eventually, a shimmer appeared in one of the folds of shadow that surrounded the dark son’s haven. The hard part had now come, but Artinam had done this many times before and had taught himself not to give in to the urge to look, as a direct gaze upon shadow turns it back into just that. Instead, he continued to look away from the shimmer, and walk at a sidelong angle toward it. When he felt that he was immediately to the left of the portal, he sidled two steps to the right and, as he expected, found himself in the amphitheatre.
Within a heartbeat, the strapping form of Dream-Artinam stood triumphantly at the entrance to the dark son’s sanctuary, a full moon illuminating his muscled body.
He was about to head to the bedchamber at the rear of the amphitheatre when something niggled at the corner of his eye. Careful, once more, not to look straight at it, he relaxed his vision and let the image wend its way into his cerebral cortex through avenues other than his virtual optic nerve.
It was a young boy, a happy, childhood dream for an unhappy adult. Artinam recognized the face immediately, as it was the pre-pubescent version of the child of shadow, before he’d grown up, and before his Master had darkened and hardened him. Artinam had visited this version of the dark son on more than one occasion, and the end result had always been divinely satisfying to him. It had been five-and-a-half years since Artinam had seen this child, and the draw was irresistable.
‘The whelp thinks he’s safe in here,’ Artinam’s inner self growled. ‘He’s about to learn a lesson he won’t soon forget.’
Causing no more sensation than a mosquito softly landing on a woodsman’s leathery arms, a shadow loop of fine silken cord wrapped around Dream-Artinam’s ankle. When wary, he might have noticed. Excitement and arousal blinded him to it.
Like a chef planning out a noble’s feast, Artinam began pondering the courses of this private meal. Time being elastic in the Dream, he concentrated on slowing it, so that he might savour the violation, drinking in each succulent wail and scream, so that the passage of hours would feel like the passage of weeks.
Slowly, he walked the increasingly fearful child into the dead end of the narrow alley. He would use no charms here, only his greater power, Artinam decided. That always made their pain, and urgent cries, more gratifying.
As Dream-Artinam reached down to remove his belt, the boy’s transformation began. With an emotional state that evolved from curiosity to horrified fascination to pure terror, the priest began to search frantically for an exit from this dream, but his leg was caught in something, and his careful control was being challenged by this nightmare. Victims were –not- supposed to do this!
The ‘boy’ was now twelve feet in height, red, impossibly muscular, and sporting horns and a tail, though the same soft, cherubic face smiled down at Artinam. A massive flaming sword was in his right hand and he advanced on the now-shaking man, who noticed, to his horror, that Dream-Artinam had been dispelled, and that the pink, fleshy body of his ‘natural’ form had replaced him.
Artinam tried to tell himself that this was a dream, that he mustn’t give in to his fear, but hindbrain was taking over from forebrain, and his terror was becoming uncontrollable. At some level, it –was- real, he now knew, and he had altered the timing of it so that it would take days or weeks to play out. The frighteningly long pauses between the sound of heartbeats in his ears confirmed this.
The fiend’s eyes followed Artinam’s hands to his belt, and, in a child-like voice, it looked at him and said only one word, a word that brooked no objection. “Continue.”
When he stood naked and shaking in front of the fiend-child, cold dream-sweat pouring down his blotchy body, the man who had caused so much fear, and so much suffering, prepared to prevaricate, opening a stammering mouth that produced no sound. The child’s face smiled back, as he threw down the massive sword, raising a momentary clatter that intruded on the deafening silence, before bending and pulling some object from his massive boot.
Artinam’s eyes went wide with horror. It was a cruelly curved pair of oversized scissors.
Both his virtual and ‘real’ selves screamed with pure, unadulterated horror.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shadowkeeper ran and deftly leapt through the open window, landing silently on the varnished spruce floor of the girls’ common room on the second floor of the orphanage. The sweet smell of innocence assaulted her nostrils like an overripe lilac flower, and she padded aimlessly until she reached the child she –felt- she needed.
Betsy Arvoren, whose parents had been killed and mangled beyond recognition by something she’d heard referred to as Death Drinker, lay dreaming pleasant dreams of her mom, her dad, and lemonade. The warm, moist wind against her neck was so lovely, so wonderful. It gave her goose bumps and elicited a short, dreamy giggle.
Shadowkeeper’s open maw hovered over Betsy’s soft neck, as the beast felt the flow of blood behind her corneas and in her ears. ‘She would taste magnificent, not tough and sinewy like wild beasts’, she thought.
But there was pushing, and then there was breaking, and, unlike Artinam, Shadowkeeper, even overlaid with a beast’s instincts, knew the difference. She was warning the dark son, not punishing him.
She padded to the foot of the bed, took one shoe in her mouth, and leapt from the window. |
ELVES! |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 21 Nov 2006 04:13 AM |
He stood in the folds of the purple velvet drapes, somehow melding his frame against the stone wall and not disturbing the fabric that hid him, his entire body remaining motionless for the last two hours. The child of shadow hadn’t relished the idea of being in the room for the act, but he found no other way he could trust to verify that the woman had earned her fate. Relief washed over him when the moans subsided and gave way to soft murmurs.
The dark son let his mind wander to Medechai as as the two sinners whispered softly a bare six feet from him. “The problem with sick perverts is that they lose sight of their mission,” Muriel had once told Shadowkeeper, Artinam being a rather unsuitable audience for such wisdom. The dark son, feigning sleep, had drunk in that conversation, and had overheard Muriel’s final whispered orders, orders that betrayed no regret or compassion. Shadowkeeper had slunk into Port Royale some days later and killed their agent after he’d gotten too sloppy, spying on women in the bathhouse, engaging a loose-lipped housekeeper, and leaving a trail of those accursed nuts that anyone who could string five words into a sentence could follow. “Self-gratification,” Muriel had opined, “is too weak a motive for murder.”
At some level, the dark son knew his pain and emotions were being used by Muriel and her cohorts to give him a ‘strong’ motive for murder, but understanding manipulation and resisting it were distant cousins. If he had cause to question too deeply, the shoe he now carried in his pack was reminder enough.
The creak of floorboards told him that the fornicators were finally finishing their transaction. There was a tinkle of coins, a murmured thanks, and the soft rasp of cotton garments being pulled over smooth skin. A heavy door swung open, then closed again, followed by the slap-slap of an old man’s fallen arches marking his footsteps as he walked along the wooden floor to the wardrobe beside his bed.
-He- had earned the same fate as she, but the dark son had his orders, so he waited patiently for the man to leave before slinking from the room and heading to the place he knew Eliza would go next – the bathhouse.
There, she would wash off the stink of her transgressions before returning to her husband, as the child of shadow had seen her do every day this week.
On this day, she would not return.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eliza left Harold with a lightness of step that had become a part of her id ever since the first day he had proposed their arrangement.
Yes, he was old, bald, soft, and wrinkled. However, he smelled wonderful, didn’t drink to an excess that resulted in him emptying his belly in her bed, and had never held her over his knee and beat her with a rod “no thicker than his thumb”.
He provided well for her, and required only that she be understanding when he couldn’t perform and enthusiastic when he could. When compared to what her drunken, brutish husband asked of her, his desires were downright heavenly. Love was too strong a word for what she felt for Harold, as it didn’t compare to what she felt for Velia, but it was a far sight to the opposite end of the spectrum of what she felt for Brunton, the man who had managed to win her hand by planting his seed in her belly on the first occasion she had ever drunk to excess.
The walk from bathhouse to home was always met with a mix of trepidation and anticipation – caused in equal measure by Brunton and Velia respectively. On this afternoon, however, the shadows seemed to dance oddly, and something unsettled her. As she walked by the abandoned, charred estate that marked the entrance to the blind, narrow alley full of dilapidated row houses that constituted her ‘neighborhood’, Eliza felt the sharp sting of metal puncturing the soft flesh of her exposed neck. Her hand went to the wound instinctively, as her tongue began to swell and her throat began to constrict. She fell within seconds and died within a minute.
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It had been planned perfectly. People avoided this ruin, so a woman losing her footing would not immediately receive help. When a strong-looking man walked up and lifted her to her feet, most would conclude she had received assistance, and turn to their own business. Some might find it odd that he would escort her to the abandoned house, but why question the rationality of a samaritan?
When he left some hours later under the cover of darkness and cloaked in shadow, carrying a heavy sack, nobody was there to question anything.
As instructed, he left her body deep beneath the city, on the stone floor among the smashed bones, a drop of the woman’s blood in the ornate chalice.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Later that night, a shadowy form crept into a small home that stunk of smoke and ale, olfactory offense supplemented by the unpleasant sound of loud, liquid snores.
A small girl slept in the corner of the single room, a corner that Eliza had partitioned off with a few thick linens of heavy brown burlap. The dark son carefully lifted and cradled her, bedsheets and all, in his strong arms.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Early the next morning, Marianna found something curious amongst the slumbering bodies in the girls’ common room – an extra child. Laying on the dozing shape was a rolled-up, sealed piece of parchment, which Marianna immediately tore open and read. The following message was transcribed in flowing, perfectly formed script:
I leev with you the gurl Veeleeya.
She duznt no it, but her muther is ded. Her fother is a bad man hoo dreemz of hurting her wen she gets older. He wont miss her now.
If you return her too her fother, she will be back heer the next dae, but her fother will be ded too.
Thank you |
ELVES! |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 22 Nov 2006 05:48 PM |
Earlier…
Swish…
The Gods are not at all places at all times, and even the most loyal and useful servants cannot garner their undivided attention. When death ruins a body beyond repair, it is not a simple matter to put it back together. It is rarely done on a whim.
Swish…
Blood raced through the arteries of a loyal and useful servant of the God of Shadow, globules of plaque clinging weakly to arterial walls but swaying dangerously with each ebb and flow of crimson liquid.
Swish…
A small piece broke off, small enough that it could safely travel through heart and brain without stopping, small enough that it could safely end its journey at the kidneys and be no more threat.
Swish…
It became a projectile.
Swish…
It hurtled through the narrow, winding tubes, accelerating with the host’s accelerating heartbeat. It raced through the neck towards the brain.
Swish…
A collision stopped the small piece, but dislodged a much larger one with kinetic energy dwarfing any produced by the most powerful wizards at the so-called macro level. The artery, even with the rounded stalactites and stalagmites of plaque that ringed it, was wide enough to accommodate it.
Swish…
The narrowing passages that it approached were not.
Swish…
It reached a corner, then bumped against other pieces, creating a horizontal avalanche. Microscopic remnants of a life of excess stuck together in an impenetrable dam. Tissue, starved of oxygen, began to die. Memories began to fade. Muscles began to fail.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Lord of Shadow watched with amusement. The dark son was indeed powerful in the dream, and it would benefit him to know that he had bested and broken Artinam, but it would not benefit Him to lose the pervert. Depravity could not be taught, and was immensely useful. The stroke would impair the man’s reasoning and speech, and leave him with difficulty using the left side of his body, but his hindbrain was unaffected. He would still have his desires, but now they would be overlaid with pure hate; hate for what had been done to him. Hate because the dark son was a dog that Artinam could no longer kick. He would find others, though, and punish them as proxies. The Lord of Shadow definitely did not wish to lose this one. Not yet.
On this day, Artinam had His undivided attention.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As she stood watching Artinam suck in death-gulps of air and listened to his screams subside to horrified moans and whimpers, Muriel felt a presence in her mind. It was there only briefly, and didn’t speak to her as much as gesture, the gesture being no more than a finger waggling, as that of a mother catching her daughter with her hand in the cookie jar. That waggling finger told her to put the cookie back.
Obeying her God, she hurried forward and shook the now-convulsing man to consciousness. |
ELVES! |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 25 Nov 2006 03:44 PM |
Every so often, a woman disappears from the slums of Port Royale. If there are witnesses, they aren't talking. Funerals aren't held when bodies can't be found, so the effects are felt silently, with little in the way of public memorials or public grief. Husbands and children search for their missing wives and mothers, finding neither clue nor closure. Deep beneath the city, a reluctant worshipper feeds a hungry God.
Then he returns to the surface and posits his face with the rest of the roaming mass of humanity that call the slums home. He is the wolf in sheep's clothing, and he is relentless. |
ELVES! |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 04 Dec 2006 11:36 AM |
The detective had continued to chase dead ends, and the dark son had let him live. Finding him had depended on following the trail of his father, his -real- father, and the man hadn’t seen that. The tracks leading the other way had long since disappeared.
The seer, however, had told him that the other, the detective’s employer, hunted him as well. This one -had- gone to Midor. This one did know. This one was on the path, and would try to stop him.
The dark son was not going to let that happen.
It would be another unearned death, as Priyavel Vosteph’s had been, and would be his seventh murder in a span of five weeks, but it had to be done. The man, in any event, had unwittingly sent him to meet his torment at the hands of Artinam. At some level, he was exacting revenge.
He had told the elf that he was leaving, that he had a mission, and that he might not return. He had told her a great deal more, and had she seen past her own narcissism, events might have turned out differently.
Instead, when she met the victim, she splashed in the sewers of Port Royale like a kitten chasing its own tail, oblivious to the warning the dark son had given.
The victim was back from Midor, his search interrupted by a meeting of mages at Ka’azim.
After the meeting, the wizard returned to Port Royale, checked for messages at his room at the Broken Mask, and sat down to the first square meal he’d had in weeks.
Later, his dinner eaten, he left the tavern in search of his friend, the orc Ophelia. The rain was no surprise. The thick-shafted arrow through his heart was.
In a span of seconds, Lucius Edmonds died.
Seven. |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 04 Dec 2006 12:03 PM |
| ((eek!)) |
Purpose in life: finding better ways of allowing players to kill themselves. Repeatedly.
--
"...Cause he mixes it with love
And makes the world taste good."
--
<@James42> Lawful good isn't in your vocabulary, it's on your menu.
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 05 Dec 2006 04:33 PM |
*Ophelia takes a seat at the bar at the Broken Mask Tavern and orders a drink*
"Morning Margaret, Hey, a friend of mine said Lucius was in town did you see him go up to his room?"
Margaret looks back, nodding to the orc in a distant manner reserved for those of the same sex, before a sympathetic look crosses her face and she shakes her head, looking down.
"You 'is woman now?" she asks quietly, wringing her hands. "Did 'ee move on from tha' pretend orc to a reg'lar one?"
Ophelia sighs and rolls her eyes giving her a come on now look.
Margaret stands straight at Ophelia's negative reply, tightening her facial features and willing her eyes to meet those of the orc.
"I'm thinkin' 'ee's dead," she says quietly. "I'm thinkin' 'ee was felled by an arrow outside that door," she continues, pointing to the main entrance. "Thet idjit turnip fella come runnin' in 'ere sayin' thet a fella in grey robes got shot through, 'en thet 'ee 'ad ta take shelter 'en 'ere, 'cause of the 'ail of arrows that came after.
Ophelia face stones and she slowly places her drink onto the bar. Dead eyes watch Margaret continue.
"The folks that was left in the inn, they wasn' adventurin' types, miss. We waited a good five spins of an egg timer before goin' to check on 'im. By then, 'ere was some blood on the cobblestones, 'en some arrows stuck 'en the doorframe, but 'et fella's body was gone."
Reaching out her hand and touching Ophelia on the elbow, Margaret asks softly: "Did you want to collect 'is things?"
Ophelia someplace else just nods as she takes a spare key Margaret hands for her. She has keys for all the rooms just for this type of thing that seem to happen way to often. Ophelia raises slowly staring at the key in her hand with a look like she was just sucker punched in the gut. Almost as an afterthought, Ophelia looks back to Margaret. “And the arrows?”
"Big 'uns," Margaret replies. "Thick. Same kind that was used to kill thet woman a few weeks back."
She then reaches under the counter and hands one to Ophelia, the head rent from it, but the remainder of the thick, straight, wooden shaft intact, two of the original three eagle feathers still attached.
"I'm sorry," Margaret says, briefly placing her own delicate hand on Ophelia's thick forearm, before taking a pitcher to the table by the door, where a woman by the name of Swinset and a couple of her friends had begun singing a baudy song.
With key in one hand and the shaft in the other Ophelia doesn’t remember the trip to Lucius’s room. She just ended up there. Standing looking at the door wondering what the hell had just happen.
((Authored mostly by Robber and a little by me for Ophelia’s stuff)) |
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Re: Dark Son Rising
Posted: 07 Dec 2006 02:17 AM |
Londo Demset, the 'dark son' of a Midoran paladin and a common woman from the slums of Port Royale, had teetered on the edge of the void for three days now, ever since he'd murdered his half-brother.
The void was a dangerous place to stay, as, although it emptied one of feeling, it dulled all of one's other senses as well.
Londo worked his way deeper into the sewers, oblivious to the fact that he'd just walked in carrying a large sack over his shoulder in broad daylight, oblivious to the fact that others had seen him do so, and oblivious to the fact that a vengeful orc now followed him with a mad elf in tow.
The dead woman who was draped across his shoulder wasn't even a mother, only a mother-to-be. Londo had broken his own rule, something his psyche's creators in a far-away cave would have been immensely proud of. In his mind, the dark son simply rationalized that there were worse fates than never knowing life.
Soon enough, he was surrounded by jet-black bones and held a thin, slit wrist over the silver chalice. His dulled senses weren't aware of the approaching orc and elf until it was too late.
A swirl of shadow caused him to look up; standing in front of him was Josaphine, the mad elven girl who had become so close to him over the past weeks.
A voice from the void told him to attack. She was a threat. He did, nearly felling her with arrows before a furious orc charged him, stabbing a cruelly sharp sword (elven, ironically) into his chest, puncturing his lungs and ensuring he would not be long of the world.
Ophelia's vow was to avenge her friend, and death was not a cruel enough sentence to deal. As Londo took shallow, unsteady breaths, she told him of her plan. She would kill him, but it wouldn't end there. Death could be cheated, and she would undo his - once he'd been safely delivered to the Sugar Man.
As he neared death, and as he allowed himself to retreat from the void, Londo said the only thing that came to mind...sorry. The elf delivered a kiss to his forehead and an arrow to his heart.
Death came swiftly. |
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