Ravenloft: Prisoners of the Mist
Within the swirling Mist (IC) => Tales Around the Campfire => Topic started by: UilliamNebel on February 11, 2019, 03:22:27 AM
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Within the dark rundown home in the Vallaki slums, there was no light. Sitting in his own blood and sweat, from wounds received and addressed just out his front door was Thadeous. Deep and slow breaths being taken by him to try and find calm as Stygia the familiar curled up alongside, puring. The Midnight Cat herself also sought attentions for her pains suffered through the night’s fighting, though the physical wounds mended with divine touch of the Goddess Hala. Man and magic beast laid there, near motionless, just breathing in the complete dark as mice scurried around them. Ballet of shadow and darker shadow danced across the wall opposite from the two, cast in dull fire orange, lunar silver, and abyss black from underneath the shut front door, refracted from the few lights on the Strada de Moarte, or ‘Alley of Death’ from Balok to the Common. Even in the weak lamp and torch light, Stygia’s misty breath gave motion to the shadows on the wall as it wafed up to the air, given an almost ethereal luminescence, as illumination passed through it.
The rundown place still smelled of mouse urine, and the acid stagnant water down below in the perpetually flooded cellar stench, where a green slime infestation still festered, seeped up through the floor boards.
As aging Stygia laid next to Thadeous, he closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. He had never allowed himself any doubts about Stygia’s true nature. But still, tied to him as a familiar, and completely loyal to a fault, it would be the most horrific act he had to ever undertake. Thadeous knew he would have no chance to save himself or anyone else that got involved in trying to save the elderly Midnight Cat and the Halan from the evil that had decided on a whim, based on Thadeous attempt to join what he had believed was an academic circle, to now place him in this circumstance he had no escape from. His closest friend, flawed as she was, the emotional pain and consequence aside, her absence would leave him at terrible disadvantage and also suffering great magical damage as well. But as he knew there was no choice, he was compelled, and even taking this course, from which he really had no choice given the power and reach of the one that demanded this of him, he would most likely still be killed anyway as what chance was there they weren’t doing this just because they could and saw it as a fun game.
‘I love you Stygia.’ Thadeous whispered it, meaning it, as he took the oldest friend he had up in his arms. And with a shove, she went still there in his grasp, the dart Thadeous had been palming slipped painlessly through her heart and lungs to deliver a sudden, painless death. As for Thadeous, the immediate pain on his being was terrible, and overwhelming, as he felt wave after wave of agony strike him as his physical being was as damaged as sure as if he had driven the dart into his own gut. There was no way out of this, the pain was unceasing, both spiritually, emotionally, and physically for him. It didn’t pass, it only built more and more in intensity, as he was in such a state that he wasn’t even able to scream out in agony for how completely in torment his body and soul were. The deed done, but the pain never ending going forward as he stayed there in utter sorrow, powerless to do otherwise, or even have any type of reprieve or action against the force that made him do this, as it wouldn’t be possible given his own humble and vastly over matched capabilities. And to think that such torment was visited on him for simply applying to the Les Erudites Société, and being rejected, to now having this happen. Through the horror he was experiencing, he wouldn’t think of it, but eventually he might come to be thankful he had not written of anything more far reaching that those in the society could have used to hurt even more of those he cared about, like his fellow Halans.