Avelyn Oldeguard, He who waits and watches

[MidnightSyndicate]

Avelyn's fingers brush over the the leather bound journal that he carries to all his adventures. The leather creaked as he turned it open, letting the pages flutter as he took in the scent of parchment. He flipped to a more recent entry, and read it quietly to himself, as he sat waiting, watching, letting his charge practice her craft in the all but abandoned tannery in Vallaki.

Port au Lucine, a city under siege by its own people. I’ve returned to the city with my charge at my side. During the day, it looks like a beautiful testament to art and high culture, nestled on the shore of rich endless plains. At night, it sinks back into the mire formed by its own decadence. The criminal element has organized into all out insurrection, claiming half the city as their own as they go on a looting and raping rampage. The guards fall back to the richer parts of the city. That is Port au Lucine in its entirety.

A city that once sat on the edge of tomorrow, a beacon of virtue and innovative thinking, now finds itself tumbling back into the chaos of yesterday’s wounds. I’m told the war did this to the city, but I somehow doubt it. Sure, a war can be bad for a city. But a bad peace can be worse. I’ve walked the length of the Coastway in Faerun when I served the church. I’ve seen the damage negligence and corruption can do. There’s a cancer here, though I’m not sure where yet.

I have my suspicions. The ruling class is always the first likely culprit. But when politics and bureaucracy are involved, it usually means there is a power struggle somewhere. It’s possible that someone in the ruling class is paying and organizing the criminal cartels to do the damage they’ve wrought. At first glance they just seemed like unruly mobs, enraged peasants, and caliban with no prospects of a future. But then we ran into some enforcers. They were well armed, well trained, knew the city intimately as they attacked from alleys and ran down well mapped escape routes. You don’t get that good at bushwhacking without an experienced mind to teach you how….

Then there’s the likelihood that the powers-to-be decided they had an overpopulation problem. Maybe they organized the thugs, or maybe they were already a threat and decided to use them as an opportunity. The only thing I know for certain, the guard isn’t lacking in strength and number, so someone is ordering them to pull out and leave the killers to do the butcher’s work.

Then there's always the chance of outside influence. An enemy of the city inciting chaos and riots. It's a cunning strategy. Why waste lives and resources when you can turn your enemies on themselves? The outside influence doesn't explain the absence of the rule of law though. There are too many parts that don't fit into this picture, and there are more that are missing. It'll be on my mind until I figured it out, Helm knows I cannot abide a mystery. It feels like home. Rae and I will do well here.

[MidnightSyndicate]

     The walls began to crumble. The high towers of defense, the impregnable bulwarks once raised high, the cold unyielding stone... all reduced to rubble. The constructs Avelyn and his charge had put up for so long to keep others at a distance gave way to the touch of pale flesh glowing beside a fire. Lips hungrily chased each other, and their arms greedily clung to one another. The troubles of the world had departed, leaving them to their solace for a moment, in the dark, beside the waning embers of their fire. "Appropriate," he thought to himself. His body was more concerned with keeping the shivering and soaked elf close, the warm heat radiating from him being stolen by the frigid jabs of the rivulets of water soaking through his clothes from her skin. His arms painted black with calligraphy enveloped her like dark wings. As he drank her kiss like a pauper drunk on wine and misery, his mind screamed with words he couldn't say after a night of revelations. "How can she stand it, sitting there like a waning fire, waiting for her light to go out?"

     He didn't have time for more words. His fingers combed through damp hair to clutch her head close to his chest, waiting as time forgot them for a brief moment. The cold unyielding calm that ruled over his mind was broken by the distant sound of Fyzgig's voice in the back of his mind. You won. He heard those words before. They were the words of a child, someone ignorant of the cost and quickly dwindling worth of a victory.

Avelyn didn't call it victory. He called it a beginning.

[MidnightSyndicate]

The day had waned, the sun was sinking into the ocean. Avelyn's body burned with the exertion of his regimen, recovering from practicing his form and the quick killing strikes he had been developing for his carefully precise combat style. Worn and exhausted, with Rae at work on her latest designs and batches of equipment at her workbench, he sank to the ground. Too tired to do more than crack open his journal and recant the morning as serpentine veins twitched numbingly over the thick mounds and channels of knotted sinew they snaked over, he began to immerse himself, adding to the entry before the memory turned bitter or hazy.

Fools, like me

   We found ourselves in Port-Au-Lucine, a company of four; including Jack, Yasz, my charge, and myself. A cloak of night was draped over the city's sky. Only a few lights were left to shine through the mantle while we waited for day in all its burning fury to chase the criminal element back into its hole.

   Elven eyes were turned skyward to wait for dawn. They were also cast downward to watch the reflections on the harbor. They turned around, dizzied by spires, the structures of man; monuments of iron and stone rising to make them feel small and put them in their place.

   My eyes were elsewhere... I had been watching Rae that day. I watched her shift between her moods; polite, smiling, solemn, cold. Something ate at her, as things often did. I knew I would never get to hear a word of it. For someone that valued trust so much, she always came up short on the giving half, unless of course it was one of her kin asking. It at least narrowed my suspicions. It had to involve her impeccable kin. Always plotting and scheming, driving and wedging a chisel into things that are just fine and beautiful the way they are, for the sake of their traditions and bigoted perceptions.

   I knew she had a falling out with Ae'ver, but little else. Too bad, I was starting to warm up to the gopher. I know her kind sees her attachment to me as shameful, though they won’t say it when they think I'm in earshot. I confronted a few of them, the cowards. F*ck them, the fools with their hand-me-down point of view and valiant counter-point bullsh*t excuses. They're so eager to sit there and deny all of their faults while tugging at strings and whispering to one another to try and manipulate Rae’s destiny. I'm not too ashamed or righteous to admit my faults, and at least I let her OWN the decisions she makes, no less than I own my mistakes. But then, they love their whispers. Smiling and nodding pleasantly face to face, then quickly whispering and urging each other to try and draw my charge down another path.

   The bitter betrayals of her kind, and her own constant secrets made it hard to be around her, especially that day. Looking at her helped... she wasn't hiding who and what she was that night. She was plain to see, a new gown that clung to her slender shoulders; I'm sure it had its own tale I'd never know the full truth of; bright eyes sparkling, and pretty face tilted away from me to leave only a glimpse of those adorable ears; a face men have drawn steel for. It was easy to see the hurt through her guard. It would have been easier still to wait until it came crumbling down, until she was vulnerable and exposed, to be there for her at her weakest... but I didn't want to be that man. It wasn't just my oaths, I didn't want to be another Corax, another Fyzgig, or any other shameless coward that made a battle of something that wasn't mine to surrender, and fell upon her to only give her borrowed strength when she was at her weakest.

   I couldn't help the bitter laugh that came out when I thought of the river of blood that would flow for the sake of that face, the war of fools that would be fought, the constant vigil I'd have to keep against the shadows her own friends smiled from, all because my ears weren't pointy enough to satisfy them. She heard my laugh, sour and harsh as it was, and looked to me. She was curious, likely wondering what was happening in my mind and I couldn't hide my mirthless smile. I told her, "You're going to be so angry with me."

   Her voice was exhausted, mentally and physically when she spoke back, the closest thing to a conversation we had all day, "I currently do not possess the capacity for anger."
I remembered my promises at that moment, and I decided not to wait for her to be at her weakest to lift her up again. I guess I'm still off guard against that face. I shook my head, I was still too willing to take that leap, and I hated myself for it.

   I told her, "Not today, Serra. Centuries from now. We're dying a drop at a time, and when we're done bleeding, ever and always bleeding into the chasm, and that last drop of mortality seeps from us, when the veins run dry and these lives no longer offer us anything to bind us to these fragile bodies... I'll have to conquer Arvandor just to visit you upon its shores, and on that day you will be so angry that I do, because woe be to the elven souls who tell me I may not enter to see you."

   Jack, Yasz, and Rae... all those elven eyes turned toward me, and my blasphemy. They were equally stunned. Jack was the first to speak, "Avelyn the poet" he said with a growing grin. Yasz kept quiet, hard to say if she was insulted. Rae though... Rae melted, and for a moment, a familiar smile shone across that face, mirroring the dawn. It reminded me of better, sweeter days, before her kind tried to dictate who would get to court her. The mixed bittersweet conflict inside me wasn't enough to jade my mind. I could see the correlation between the dwindling smiles and the time she spent among her own kind.

   I could feel my face darken, but they thought it was bashfulness. I wanted to change the subject before they saw the anger for what it was, so I told Jack, "Every swordsman is a poet." One last look at Rae before the sun piqued told me that I'd be writing many haiku's at the edge of my sword... all because of the many fools that would be rendered helpless by that face. Fools, like me.

[MidnightSyndicate]

Calloused hands moved with a shake where once was a deftness stolen by the thief known as time. A sad replacement that could never measure up to what was lost. They unearthed a leather-bound journal from the depths of a pack, the cover worn from sinking beneath the chaffing contents that had risen above it in the hierarchy of use. Cracked open to the familiar scent of age and parchment, the pages spilled over themselves to the welcome and once familiar glare of daylight like an old man crawling out of bed to greet the morning. Finding a blank page, its owner began to scratch an entry into the forgotten treasure that once brought him a sense of peace.

Everyone I know is dead. Or gone. Missing. I met an elf that seems to increasingly gravitate to my presence. Each encounter seems to last longer. She listens to my stories when my mind begins to tumble out again. I don't know if I still have all the pieces. I think she does it to be polite, out of pity, perhaps. I feel old. I cannot think anymore. Something is wrong with me. Rae's last words? Maybe.

[MidnightSyndicate]

Feverishly scrawling, hands splotched with ink, fingers pushing and smearing the marks to shade and give lines context. Avelyn worked urgently. He must capture it while the memory was fresh, he must not forget. Around the image he had added to his notes he began to scrawl the events that had unfolded, straining his eyes against the haze where the dark of the night met the light from the lone candle that lent an ear to his ravings. Everything else outside that small sphere of radiance fell away into non-existence.


 I was walking, traveling south of Vallaki on the road that was to take us east through the woods with a man whose name has already been stolen from my memory. He was a sturdy man, in heavy armor, wished to understand the sciences. For a fair bargain, I offered to guide him to Midway, and tutor him. It is what Rinn would have wanted. Remember Rinn. Reinhart Rinn. He was a good man, you must not forget, not again.

  Scenes of carnage are not unusual in the early hours of the day, often left abandoned and discarded by the artists that had made them a tragic canvas for the dye inside of their skin. This was different though, it was a paradox. Four carcasses. One bear, meat gone to waste, fur stripped from its flanks. Poachers, or hunters. One in the same, but nothing new.

 The deer are what caught my eye. One seemed normal at first, but was dead and cold as a stone. Exsanguinated, likely the work of a vampire. I've survived enough of their short lived reigns of terror to be familiar with the work by now. But beside it, everything else was wrong. Another deer, ripped apart in feral form, a show of strength and brutality, as well as waste. It showed few signs of feast or hunger. The third carcass was the most confusing. A quick kill, chunks chewed off. Vampires need blood, not meat. Why was that there, so close?

 The proximity of these kills to one another raises unnerving theories, of those I believe one of two is most plausible. Either this creature is newly woken, and it did not know at first how to curb its hunger, so it killed with a ravenous urge, and found that the meat did not quench, but the rivulets of blood running from it did. Then it learned to drink, and drained the exsanguinated deer dry. But this theory is flawed. The deer would not have lingered so close together at the sight of the carnage, and I cannot imagine that it killed them at the same time with varying measures of force. Could the kills have spanned several days? I should have checked them better.

 The second theory, there were two beasts of different breeds. One that feeds on blood, and the other on flesh. The prospect of such an alliance makes me uneasy. This would indicate a cunning intelligence driving this violence. Creatures of these nature are usually territorial, and manageable because they do not work together. Who do I warn, who do I tell when there are no more Iron Wolves about? I should not have gone away for so long.

Another strange event took place along the humble journey. As I walked the road that paralleled the southern shores of Lake Zarovich, I noticed the waters had receded. The lake had sunk several feet, and in the process revealed a path that snaked to a sunken ruin in the shallows of the shores. Normally little more than a the hand of a drowning man breaking the surface in a large and misty vista, now accessible. A year ago it had not been so. I know not how long this way has been revealed, but I felt compelled to enter and know what had lain just out of reach for so long. The architecture had all of what I would expect from Barovian craftsmanship. Ancient, detailed, and artfully done. A skill they do not seem to practice or replicate anymore. The turf around it seemed sturdy, tended to, not waterlogged, and the path was reinforced with stone borders to keep flooding at bay. I could not tell if the grounds were recently tended, or this island turned peninsula surfaced shortly after my departure from Barovia.

 Some of the growth was old, the door was eaten away by the waves, nothing barred my entry. Within I found a journal recounting of a tragic and unfortunate fate for one who had formed a coven with a vampire. There she was imprisoned and entombed, I imagine until her dying day. Legends say vampires cannot cross running water. Is it possible she was turned and imprisoned there, and now the receding water that opened a path has allowed her to escape? Were the ravenous killings in the woods the product of her first feast? Was she something else, and now freed by the creature that had glamoured her in the journal? Either possibility could link to the recent finding in the forest. I know something is afoot, but I do not yet posses the answers. Helm knows I cannot abide a mystery.

[MidnightSyndicate]

Sitting in a corner of the recently refurbished inn, Avelyn broods in a foul mood, irritably wrapping an arm in bandages using one hand and clenching teeth. The current blank page of his journal lays dotted with a few specs of treasonous droplets of blood that had escaped him, heralding danger before his pen could do its work.

Danya. That is what the locals call the latest vampire running amok in Barovia. Now I have a name, and a face to put to the creature. I am still uncertain if she is related to the ruins, or to the killings in the woods. I would find that infinitely discouraging, to learn that the build up of that secret, of that history, slumbering for so long, would just lead to... this creature. What I do know is she is a blunt instrument, the ogre of her kind, with the voice of a banshee and a strength that is unusual even among the undead. Where the ones before her were subtle, cunning, and even commanded at least a small amount of charm, she suffers a deficit of these traits that are instead filled with brutish strength and at least a modicum of magic. While others tried to lure their prey away with their words, then their glamour, she will pursue them even into crowds and groups. How she has survived this long without turning a corner into a mob, I have no idea. How I constantly seem to run afoul of these abominations is even more a mystery, it is as if I attract them; but I can safely say at this point the vampire hins were more interesting to pursue than this creature.

I feel almost cheated, all my investigations and curiosity deflated, and the grand answer to the puzzles I have sought to solve thus far leads to one simple answer. An equally simple brute. Someone else can be the hero this time, I have no ambition to pursue this case any more. When this case began, it sharpened my mind, keened my senses. The mystery helped me become a portion of the man I once was. I fear without it to focus me I will begin to regress, and my condition will worsen. Helm help me.

[MidnightSyndicate]

How do I find myself in these situations so often? For a moment, a brief moment, I thought we had found Danya's coffin. We were in the ruined fort west of Vallaki, trudging through the dark in search of anything that might bring us wealth enough to go a few more days in the comfort of a tavern before being forced to resort to treading the depths of the mists for another scavenge. There, in the dark, in a chamber that should have been empty, we found something. Candles and a shrine of a make I could not recognize gave luminescence to that place, there in the dark, dividing the light from the shadow like an unholy sanctum. Walled off behind fortified structures was a coffin of stone set in place like a false idol.

As a man that does not believe in coincidence, my mind raced to the assumption of whose it could be. I had with me only a small companionship, half of which were newly misted, but I had Ero at my back, and that seemed as if it would be enough should my suspicions have proven true. With what little preparation we could make, I blasted the retaining barriers to rubble using the harnessed power of the sciences. We forced the lid open, and we found only vacancy. It was night. Whatever called that cold stone home was likely out and about, and when it returned it would easily recognize the damage inflicted upon the sanctuary it had kept secret by way of some unholy coven. If it returned in waning hours of night, it would not have time enough to move its coffin, this much I knew. We had until the next dusk.

We fought to the nearest exit, past the dead that had made themselves at home in that place, and stole away like thieves in the night. Wary of the owner's return, we skulked through the dark the whole way to Vallaki. As Ero went to gather strong allies, I prepared the tools I would need. A stake carved from ash, bottles that contained fire which could sunder stone, and the Gearling device I that hoped to never need. Over the years I have been approached by several that wanted to learn the ways of the Weaponmaster, and each I had turned away, for they always failed to recognize the first lesson. No matter how skilled of a swordsman you may be, you can no more master metal than man can master the gods. No amount of training or will can ever make that steel strike true for you, it must have the mind needed to drive it home. Your mind, is always your first weapon, and everything else a sidearm. Today, my weapon of choice was the destructive power of science.

Ero, a powerful woodland priest by the name of Atticus, Mina, Inno one of the newly misted, and myself made the return before the sun could sink behind the horizon. Time would be short. If the creature was resting, it will have made preparations for our return. An uneasy sense filled the back of my mind that I dared not share with the company. Fear could undo stronger men and women. There was at least familiarity to it all. The closer I came to death and peril, the sharper my instincts became, and the more the man I was began to surface. At every stop and junction I set my eyes to keep the vigil. At every spare moment I found myself instinctively checking my weapons and supplies. I felt... at home, there in the darkest of places, I found pieces of myself I had lost. What does it say of me that I have to delve into the heart of the night to find myself?

We descended through the most direct route, entering by way of a tower where the most phantoms would congregate in a black mass. With steel blessed, we cut through them, rendering them to little more than the wind they appeared as. We made our way to the chamber to find the coffin unmoved. As we sprung our assault, we were confounded to find it empty still. The chamber door slammed shut, and the ambush began. Never before had I seen such a mass of vampires, moving as a legion to drown us. They filled the chamber, running across the ground, and crawling through the doorway onto the walls and ceiling to reach us, to drown us beneath cold lifeless bodies...

When the butchery was done, we barred the door. We had wounded bleeding out, and precious little time. As my comrades saw to each other's wounds, I set the charges I had brought with me around the coffin, stacking them in places that should test its integrity most. Pacing back, I drew and prepared the pistol. I knew not if we would survive the day, only that I was determined to cause as much havoc for that box's owner as I could before I died.

"That's sodding enough." With a crack, the bullet hit home, and the blast blew stone apart.

Our sabotage must have been known to them, because that sound heralded the next wave of combat. The door smashed, and this time their kin entered in full armor, swords gleaming with a wicked glee. Behind them a mage spun death upon us. I clutched the brooch at my chest; warded, I entered the fray again. My fear drowned beneath a calm, an acceptance. I felt that perhaps, death would finally free me from the land of mists. How arrogant, now that I look back upon myself, to assume Helm would find me worthy of such rescue.

Worse than before, we were broken and battered. I had gorged myself on the tonics I brew, and still we were bloodied, but alive. A vampire witch, not Danya, fled as the last soldier fell and I shouted to the others before I gave pursuit. "I'm going to buy you time, Ero get out."

What a valiant excuse to shake hands with the reaper, the coward that I was, fearing life and the burden I carry more than the pain of swords. The vampire was swift, my arsenal of deadly devices was faster. Wands, bullets, bottled death. Despite it all, it kept running, singed, broken, charred. I almost admired its tenacity, but when I closed, my blade, most reliable of my tools bit into its leg, hacking halfway through its knee. When it was stumbling I was upon it like a wolf on meat. I had forgotten how long the halls of that wretched place were, and when a tower door burst open with the rest of its kin, staring at me standing over their massacred kind, I had realized my own folly. A look over my shoulder reminded me just how far I was from allies and hope. All I could do was utter a single dark laugh, resigned to my fate. This was it, and my mind swelled with the mantras and sermons I had once held so dear.

"Though I walk through the final moments of my twilight, I continue on with my head held high and no fear in my heart. I will stand in judgment of those who travel on, and find my place in the hall of olden dreams beside He of the Eyes that Never Sleep. Helm wills it."

Never before had I fought with the fury I found there. With a grace that I thought dulled with age, I moved beneath the arc of a sword. Mine relieved of him of his leg, my shield flattened his nose against his skull, my boot kicked the door shut behind him, trapping him with something more terrifying than himself, trapping him with me. He tried to climb up on one leg, my sword burst from the back of his head, pinning it to the door. When it battered open again, they had filled the stairwell, but the doorway was mine. That small portal, through which they had to march one by one, was where I made my stand, and one by one, they were hewn to meaty chunks. They took their toll, every few volunteers that pushed themselves to the front of the lines would eventually have fortune enough for a sword to find purchase on my body.

My collarbone shattered beneath a savage chop, a hole sloshing blood from my side, a tear in rendered muscle across my leg that made it hard to stand, all while a second witch of theirs flung magic from behind their ranks. She watched, her magic seeming powerless to stop me, as I made murals of her kind all along the walls, writing death poems at the edge of my sword. She fled up the stairs as the ranks dwindled. I didn't have the strength to finish this. Finally, I felt alive. I smiled a demon's grin, all bloody teeth, and awaited the end.

I was surprised when Atticus appeared at my side, burning brand in the shape of a blade held tight in his hand. "We will finish this" he declared. I admired his candor, and with his help, found strength enough to finish what I had begun. The last foes fell like wheat beneath the scythe. We had only a moment to look upon the works of our hands, him perhaps with some measure of horror at the realization of what man could become, before we heard the marching of armored boots above. We piled a few bodies against the door, and fled down the hall towards our companions, chased by the sound of battered wood and the darkness filling with scraping armor on cobbles and walls. Together we escaped, together we fled into the night, and together we were doggedly pursued by more than just the dead. 

The entry remains half finished, the well of ink depleted, with Ave's face buried in his folded arms on the desk in exhausted slumber. An open bottle sharing the communal space with him reeks of the scent of Tsuika, and a pistol lays cocked across his lap in healthy display of paranoia. (//part 2 coming soon)

[MidnightSyndicate]

The land of mists has an unusual sense of irony. Avelyn found himself in his time by the fires with the persistent company of Ero sharing sagas and epic poems he had heard over the course of his life. One was of a creature called Ornlu, the wolf mother. He had explained to her that the story served as a tale of genesis for all wolves.

Ornlu was an immense creature if insatiable hunger, and hate. For generations it had stalked a dark land, its very howls a challenge to the night that drove men indoors. Any unfortunate enough to be caught by Ornlu were killed and summarily devoured. Ornlu however was a cursed creature, that only manifested when the moon was bright. All other times it was maiden, abused and used by the vary mankind she would learn to detest. Her hate was what gave her form.

One night, Ornlu was caught in a hunter's trap as the moon had begun to wane, and remained there for days unable to escape, slowly withering and dying. It was only by the grace of a hunter that she was found, and eventually nursed back to health. Ornlu was surprised by the hunter's kindness, and eventually came to love him. This, unfortunately, worked against the machinations of the devil that had cursed her. For him, Ornlu was a tool to insight the very terror upon which he thrived. He needed his hound back, and hatched a devious plan with which to accomplish his goal.

It is said that the devil had entreated a spirit of wind or sky, that under false pretense he had convinced the being to provide a bright lunar night outside its cycle, knowing that Ornlu would be with her lover. There in her marital bed the nature of the beast emerged, and there she had ripped the throat of the hunter in her panic. Watching in horror as her lover died, she was mortified and haunted by her actions. She fled into the woodlands, howling in sorrow. Unbeknown to the devil at the time, she bore the hunter's children, who would inherit their fathers skill at the hunt, and be born into the world as the first wolves.

The legend states that at night the midnight psalm of the wolf, is the mournful lament all wolves sing in memory of their fallen father, taught to them by Ornlu. It is her song, carrying the sound of her sorrow and broken heart to the after life, ever and eternally begging his forgiveness.

Avelyn remembered the legend as a cautionary tale, warning against trying to change the nature of a beast. It came to him now, in lieu of recent events, as he penned the remainder of his journal entry.

The road in the night would prove to be just as perilous as the tunnels below. Atticus and Mina were fleet of foot, and long ahead of us, clearing the way I had hoped. Ero was carrying Inno on her back. Maimed, or dead, I could not say. We had managed to hit the western road leading to Valliki, staggering with our wounds and burden. We slowed, thinking that the greatest peril was behind us, and tried to find our stride. It wasn't until the trees began to part and fall over that we realized just how difficult the night would become.

To call the creature a wolf would be to criminally undermine the magnitude of it. That beast was a colossus. In its towering it peered over the boughs of the pines as it bowled them over with its passage. Its maw could have easily filled with the body of more than one man. Never before had I seen one of its kind, but it brought with its midnight psalm the wolven storm that would fill the outskirts like a plague. When the trees began to teeter around us, we found a renewed vigor that was kindly provided by fear, and our sense of self preservation. We could hear its snapping jaws clapping behind us, and feel its hot breath at our backs as we ran.

Even lumbering through the trees it was not losing pace, and would soon be on us. So I did what I knew best, I wheeled myself about, and stared the oncoming doom down as I told Ero to flee. My shield proved invaluable at wedging its jaws so that it couldn't engulf me, and afforded me chances to tear into its maw. Doing so introduced me to the hot stench of death and decay. It howled and brought its children down upon me. I kept my step, weaving under the titan to have them trail me single file, where I could split their skulls like timber one at a time, and take prods at the great beast's underbelly. It pivoted and wheeled, snapping its jaws sidelong to snatch me up, fangs digging into my sides. I felt my ribs giving way, my body failing, but not before I could cry out in my agony and run my sword through its eye, threading a path to its brain. We crumbled to the ground as Ero returned wearing the skin of a bear smacking aside the remaining dire wolves and worgs that had come to make a feast of me.

Climbing from its remains I found a most curious thing amidst my anguish. A belt adorned its neck like a collar. I had seen its kind before, but this one was more powerful than any I have ever seen brokered by the vardo or other merchants. Hearing howls still, I stole away with my trophy, and followed Ero on our retreat, Inno strapped to her back like a swaddled child.

By the time we met up with our companions and reached the church, and filtered inside, we had no idea what would come of the pursuit. We thought with sanctuary would come an end to the night's ordeals. It wasn't until the howling grew, and the stone walls shuddered that we realized the nightmare was not yet over. Mangled and wounded locals spilled in, telling us of a towering wolf. A second, and its flood of kin. We brought them there. They had come for us.

Weary from ripping, tearing, gnashing blows, we sallied for one last skirmish against an endless host of foes. They were right, another behemoth, at least as large as the last, was plowing its jaws through the ranks of outsiders and adventurers that were too arrogant to seek the shelter of walls at night. They were humbled by the horrific sounds of their bones snapping in those teeth as their bodies exploded like squeezed fruit, the juices of carnage bringing the host of wolves to a slaver and frenzy. Me and mine held our line, focusing on fighting as a wall, beating aside the many that crashed against us.

It was hard to see through so much blood, and harder still to track the routing adventurers that had surged into the outskirts for their pound of flesh, but somehow, eventually, the beast was forced into a route of his own and crashed through the trees to sprint north, howling at the moon and answered in turn by more we had yet to see. They gave chase and pursued. I did as well for a short way, launching the sorcerous reserve I had remaining in scrolls and wands, but could not break the creature and bring it to buckle. Mina followed, the only one fast enough to keep stride. As we picked over the wounded that could still be saved, we earned a brief respite and followed as auxiliaries.

Our leisure proved to be the better part of valor. On the road northward, fleeing and screaming warriors ran to and past us, chased by reinforcements of the wolven storm. I set my shield and turned my body to profile, blocking for Ero as the wedge that would break their charge while her long savage claws mauled them from behind me, tossing aside any who had the misfortune of not easily dislodging from her deep raking swipes. We didn't have to fight our way much further to find Mina and some of the others, fighting off the remaining horde that had gathered around the corpse of the behemoth wolf. Caught between the hammer and anvil, the remaining hounds were crushed.

Finally, the dawn began to break, and a much deserved silence fell over Barovia. I leaned heavily on my sword, body riddled with the burns of exertion. It was only in the aftermath that I tried to make sense of the events. We had found the lair of something that was not Danya. Whatever it was, it commanded not only the dead, but the other things that go bump in the night. Wandering through the ravaged outskirts, I beckoned Ero to follow me as we made our way to the graveyard. That belt was in my hand, the hard won prize, a relic with a power I have seldom seen here even amongst the most potent of warriors and mages. I had an uneasy feeling that perhaps I had slain the pet of something else, and if that proved true, the master must have truly been something to fear.

I wrapped that relic around her hips, and prayed it was not a target I was placing upon her. Helm, let it keep her safe.

[MidnightSyndicate]

At night, in the dark of a Barovian inn, the perpetual silence is interrupted by the occasional howling from outside, and a slow repetitive thud from somewhere within. While rattling walls may not be uncommon among inns that have their share ladies of the evening, this was different. Slow. Deliberate. Angry. In a light-less room stood a man bare from the waist up, tattoos marred by scars, and bandages enveloping his arm, as he stood facing the wall and drew back his arm again. His fist connected with the ruin of what was once a mirror on the wall, now no more than a gore covered abstract, a few odd shards of glass still clinging to it by blood that had congealed. The torn flesh and sinews of his fist connected with another dull thud, shards grinding against bone and tissue, the impact making sliced flesh stretch to expose more of the meat beneath. His eyes were vacant, held in thrall by the voices.

Don't hurt us Ave.

The words were meant to be a tease, chiding, innocent. They were never meant to have power over him. But he was a violent man, and felt shame that he could never make such a promise, that he could never assure anyone there existed a world in which he would not harm a woman.

His thoughts filled with a comely face, staring lifeless at an empty sky. Hist fist hit harder.

He remembered the corroded scent of blood wiped from his blade; a hollow absolution. His fist struck faster.

He remembered that face's tears racing to meet the earth that had grown sodden with her blood, paling lips parting in a final gasp.

Damn you Ave

His fist was thundering into the wall in a growing storm of blows, arm coiled in rising veins that snaked over immense mounds of sinew pulled taut by fury. He broke the frame, he pummeled the vacant space, he cracked wall, and he felt his bones shatter, ending his tantrum with a howl. He slumped, cradling his mangled hand, the precious instrument of his art, and just sobbed pathetically in silence. Then he chortled, and laughed in the absence of reason. Then he went dead silent again and only stared.

He lifted the maimed and crippled ruin up higher to observe it, seeming alien even to himself. His stern face looked about at the damage, then at a large shard on the floor, his judging scowl returned to him. "What did you do now you asshole?"

To his surprise, the reflection replied back, "this time it wasn't me."

[MidnightSyndicate]

    It is not uncommon to associate times of sorrow with dreary days whence rain weeps from iron skies, or the clouds rumble with veins of distant thunder to herald the passing of lives. Few could ever imagine, that in Barovia of all places, a day so beautiful and rare could be marred by the metallic scent of blood. Avelyn sat on a log, his hood pulled over his head to obfuscate the raw red of his eyes, and the silver streaks that lined his cheeks. His sword rested with crossguard against his shoulder, tip pitched against the dirt, blade still stained. His chest swelled with uneven and ragged breath, compelled by a ritual of command to continue on. His gaze never moved from the body of a once alluring form with skin like bronze and a fearless facade. Now small and scared, as her waning life withered where it laid on the earth.

    The wood and world all around him were silent, as if to remind him that the land itself was witness to his vile deed. He was left there, alone, with his tormented thoughts, agonizing over how they had come to this. It was too late now, too late to redeem the dreams they had woven and wound so tightly. Even in his mourning the shadow of better times haunted him with images of her smile only to be marred by the moment, and the innocence lost among the torment of grace within the storm of their contentious days.

    Grief and anger could not come to consensus of which should hold sway within, so they crashed upon each other like one wave over the next. The facade they had carried on for so long to conceal each other and their bond from the evils of the mist seemed so utterly pointless. He was exhausted from spending so long in deception when they were better than the lies they had learned to live. Now, in the end, there was nothing left to protect.

    How did they come to this? Feasting upon the eyes as the breath of life faltered within her, his body unmoving, lingering like stone beside her. He had become the only mark left in the world that proved she had ever been at all, and all that remained were the memories that held him enthralled. Until then, she had been nothing but an agent of calamity, and misery, and lies. But now, in that moment, a death dealing diva was nothing more than the betrayed and scared girl. His own true heart’s delight.

    She forced her head to look at him, “you gave it to me, and now you took it away. Damn you Ave.”

    Her chest rose with breath to speak no more.

    Avelyn bolted upright into a sit in his bedroll, his chest heaving and his hair plastered to his shoulders. His jaw clenched as if to scream, but his eyes caught the pallid figure in reverie beside him, and the urge was strangled beneath the waves of silence and shame. Her presence often brought calm, and served as a totem to ward against the hounding of memories, but this night no remedy could keep the demons at bay. The waning fire had died to an ember where they had made camp, and sitting across the dull embers was the familiar sight of himself.

    Avelyn, clad in armor, bloody sword resting against his shoulder as the reflection of eyes gleamed beneath his cowl. It leaned forward, elbows resting on its knees to scowl at him in their cold judging stare. Its lips parted, but the voice he heard was that of a woman, “You gave it to me, and now you took it away.”

[MidnightSyndicate]

It has been a long time since my mind felt the transparency of lucid thought. Years have been bled out of my life by the Mist and a lethargy that had strangled my logic. A curse I do not fully comprehend had torn me asunder, and what I can piece together from the accounts of those that have known me through those days deepens the mystery, and perhaps the depths of my own madness. If I ask five different men that knew me what manner of man I am, I will receive five wildly different replies. Warrior, merchant, scientist, diplomat, philosopher, thug, vagabond, philanthrope… I am a collection of contradictions by their testimony.

I believe I am not even truly an individual, but a fragment of one. A piece of a man destroyed and broken some years ago. Something compels him, compels me, to continue to exist in defiance of what would see our demise, clinging to life by manifesting the small broken pieces of what used to define the whole. Or perhaps that is itself the curse, to exist in fragments. To go to sleep healthy at the start of the summer, only to wake naked and wounded in the winter cold surrounded by dark woods and no memory of how I… we… came to be there.

Some part of what I was had foresight enough to plan for such an event. I find notes I am certain are intended to be for myself, written in a variety of hands I know not, within my own journal. I walk into towns and discover I hold deposits of gold that I never recalled storing in their banks. Everywhere in the domains, clues left for myself draw me further into the chaotic web surrounding my origins. Am I a madman?

The only thing I know for certain is a name. Not my own. One that all the notes beseech me to find, or warn me to never seek, in equal measure. Erolith.

Though the name feels alien upon my tongue, there is a familiarity that haunts the corners of my mind. A cold sensation slithers through the back of my brain when I attempt to conjure a face to pair with that name. Inside, a conflict rages for reasons I do not yet understand. I feel as if revelation and damnation both hang above the mystery of this person, and for some reason I find that I cannot abide a mystery.

I am Reason, I am the adversary of the unknown.

[MidnightSyndicate]

 This is a document,

 Not to prove who I was, nor to prove that I was at all. This is a warning, for the one that came before, and the many that will come after. There are many things in the dark corners of the world that have been plunged into shadow to protect those that walk in the light of day. Some secrets can be damaging and even damning with the knowledge of their existence alone, and are not meant for mortal men to know.

 So it is with the name that haunts your dreams at night. The one you wake to find scrawled into the walls by your bloody fingers worn down to the bone. The conflict within is the influence of the many, whose ideals and motivations clash with one another as they gnaw at the sanity you once held so dear. Whatever their motivations, if you listen to nothing else, listen to this.

 You stand in judgement of those who came before. The decisions you made, the lives it cost, each created the cracks that chipped at your foundations and made you vulnerable to the dark that took root within. Many lives lost, many friends gone. You are alone now. You are safe now. Your pursuit of knowledge and the need to know, to peel back the shadows that conceal the deeper mysteries, will echo in time in resonance with past guilts. She will die. You will get her killed.

I am Shame, I am real, I am not a dream. I am the chain around your neck as you scream.

[MidnightSyndicate]

Port Au Lucine,

A city of duality and contradictions that seemed fittingly enough to play a perpetual constant in the stories of many natives and Outlanders alike. A persistent stage in the past, present, and likely to be again in the future, it's call and pull affected Avelyn just as it did so many others. Looking upon the span of lights that illuminated the gentle rains that often rolled in from the harbor, a man that wore Avelyn's face considered the possibility of the next visit in silent contemplation. Beautiful as it was, he was not one to be so easily swayed by atmosphere. He was more methodical.

If anything, the stones that acted as the bones of the old city were far more impressive than the residents that now occupied it. Their nature never changed, their purpose was eternal, and their shape was as beautiful as they day they were carved. The people, on the other hand, fell far short of their own work and art, eclipsed by the very things they, or at least their ancestors, had made. In themselves they never saw the need for the same improvement that they committed to everything else around them, hiding their decline behind the guise of a self proclaimed perfection.

Such is the way of people who have never known challenge.

The man would find no help from them, not that he would trust them anyway, guarded as he was.

Like so many places he had visited in recent days, he navigated the city with a surprising familiarity. The precision of his march made him unnoticed by the guards. He had to work quickly. Control was temporary. He was uncomfortable and felt exposed without armor, but against scrutiny and inquiry simple travel clothes were a greater defense than steel plate and chain. His booted heels clicked on the marble floor as he entered the bank. Approaching the teller who regarded him with a faint and passing recognition, he attempted to coax a polite conversation from the man.

The teller was met only with a silent and emotionally void stare, save for the man craning his neck beneath the rain soaked hood of his travel cloak to touch and draw attention to the garish scar on the side of his throat. The teller watched a moment, and asked delicately, "You cannot speak?"

The strange man nodded in affirmation, digging a folded parchment from a pocket and sliding it to the teller, who read it, and looking over the notice asked "what will you be depositing today?"

The traveler had already been digging the contents out once he had given the note. A sack of coin was set on the counter, and something wrapped in cloth. The man suspected what it was, but never looked to confirm. No trace, no memory, it was given to him by one of the many, and he understood that in order to protect its secrets they should remain unknown even to him. He watched the teller collect the items, watched him store them away, making certain that no attempt was made to unwrap the parcel, and then left as wordlessly as he had arrived, marching into the night with his travel clothes whipping in a storm wracked flutter behind him until the next clue would surface, and need to be planted to aid the one.

He is Duty, no words can ever define him for he is defined by his actions. He does what must be done.

[MidnightSyndicate]

OOC Disclaimer - This was a widely unresolved plot line that is years old. Most of the characters involved are dead, or their players are no longer active, and I don't know if there are any DMs still around that had any involvement in it. I enjoyed being a part of the story and the RP, but because of military service I have had to vanish a lot over the years and never got to do as much with Ave as I wanted and have many interesting adventures that were never disclosed or completed. The Sundered Man arch, the entries that follow this, are mostly intended to bring some resolution to some of those plots. If anything I write conflicts with server lore or is an over-reach, it is written in a way that it can be dismissed as Avelyn's delusions and periods of insanity. Otherwise, I hope casual readers enjoy it.
The Sundered Man 01 - Rust and Night

The world was red.

No, that wasn't quite right. The sky was the color of fire, the moon was the color of blood, but everything beneath it was cast in hues and shades of a rust colored meridian. Walking past fallow fields where no crops had grown for years, Avelyn wandered with no memory of how he came to be there. He knew he was robbed of the knowledge. His adversary had built a fortress of secrets.

The landscape was a derelict farm with shutters that rattled in the breeze. The air tasted strongly of copper. The land held its breath in muted silence that no insect or bird dared to break.  He knew why he was there, though even that was a struggle to cling to. Something wormed at his memory like a grub wedged against the back of his skull seeking a way out. It was hard to keep the pieces together. He looked down at his hands. He had nothing but the travel clothes he wore. If he must complete his task with his hands alone then he would see it done. It was that or continue to slowly be devoured while the memory of agony was stripped away from his brain like flayed flesh. His opponent would just keep chewing on him while Avelyn was oblivious to his own suffering and demise.

His feet moved, following a sense of unease that gripped at his gut and twisted it. Something about the ranch here was making him nervous. It radiated a malevolence that felt to be the cause of the wicked sky that dominated this night. He followed that sensation. The more distraught he felt, the further he went. At times it grew difficult to breathe as the dread gripped at his throat and heart. He must have been going the right way.

The land around him showed signs of something sinister. A pile of ash and debris with the charred remains of a rag doll, the dim candle crowning a grisly shrine at the entrance to the barn, and the long clawing streaks that raked the walls of the home. He was not the first visitor to wake here. Though he could find no bodies to prove his theory, he had seen and visited enough violence in his life to know the signs for what they were.

The door was ajar. It took only a half-hearted effort to push it open. Even its hinges seemed to only whisper as if they need not offer report of his presence, something knew he was there already. He tilted his head to listen and confirmed he could hear, but no sound echoed in this awful place. Even noise felt dull, heavy. Nothing was as it should be, and seemed more like an imitation of the natural world. His travel boots normally clicked when his heels carried him across hardwood, but now that snap sounded wrong and diminished. He had never before been in a place where even sound was smothered by the dark.

He stepped over the remains of what he assumed had once been an animal. It was hard to tell in its state, twisted, abstract, and surreal. If not for the head of the horse further down the hall that funneled his path, he may never have known what it was at all. The bulk of its remains took careful effort to avoid and climb over in the narrow path before him. The head, simply sat there, welcoming him with bloated white eyes and a perpetual grin he never would have thought the animal capable of.

Approaching closer he could see the eyes were wet, runny, pulsing. Something was likely worming inside that rot. The grin the horse head presented was pulled back so far and tight that he could see rips in its nerves and skin along its jaw. Avelyn raised a boot to cautiously choose his next step around it, when its eyes erupted in an acrid spray.

Ever wary, especially here unarmed as he was, Avelyn was able to flatten himself against the wall as the ichor spewed down the hall. It fumed were it landed, eating lines through the floor as it hissed. Looking back, the skull was equally ruined. Whatever those eyes had once contained left only empty sockets that wept the putrid puss, eating and sinking the rest of the skull into the ground. He watched as that grin was the last thing to vanish in the dark of that hole.

Avelyn stepped past it, moving on and ignoring the silhouettes of blood that spattered walls and ceiling alike. They were dried to a ruddy brown. Whatever violence had been visited there happened long ago. As he reached the first door he could feel a sickness in his stomach that afflicted him with fear he was unused to. Gritting his teeth, he twisted the knob and pushed open the threshold, revealing the room beyond.

It was a simple bedroom; rustic, with a bed large enough for two. The covers were as much a mess as the stains in the hall. The furniture was nondescript and utilitarian. The windows were all boarded from the inside, turning the light of the blood moon into a panoply of shadows and shades of the rust hued landscape. Dust filled his lungs, and the ever lingering metallic scent of blood felt thick. It didn’t feel like it was everywhere, it felt like it was condensed into spaces in the air as he walked through them. The only thing that stood out in this room was the mirror.

He recognized that mirror but could not remember where or why. It was elegant, ornate, and tall. It could spin in a frame of worked silver. One of the stray beams of the moon lined the dark glass of the mirror, casting the reflection of Avelyn’s eyes back at him from across the room, only they were furious. When he stepped forward, the angle was gone and so was the reflection. A few more paces carried him to the mirror standing alone in the center of that room.

It showed no reflection now in its dark depths. His hand raised and pressed against the glass, making cracks that webbed out from his fingers far too easily. He kept pressing, the glass bent inward and floated away. It shattered but the shards only drifted lazily to spiral forth, forming a short tunnel of night speckled with gleaming fragments in a darkness that existed beyond the physical world around him. Peering into passage of ebon and silver shard he could see the reflection of the door from which he came. Staring at it filled him with a terror that he dared not let reach his face.

He hoped that at worst, he seemed hesitant. The truth was it took a long moment and a tremendous amount of will to urge his legs to move. He wanted the nightmare to end. Victory or death, there was no other path. He stepped beyond the broken mirror, and walked toward the door. As the glass began streak past him in its hurried return to its origin, he had to bring his forearms up to cover his face and hasten forth as the shards cut, and slit, and tore past to streak his limbs with thin red lines and ragged clothes, but he made it to the door.

Sounding like a glacier groaning with age, the glass walled up behind him, the cracks melting away to shut the path behind him in opaque black. He flung the door open, and stepped into a deeper darkness for fear that the world might just collapse behind him.

[MidnightSyndicate]

OOC Disclaimer - This was a widely unresolved plot line that is years old. Most of the characters involved are dead, or their players are no longer active, and I don't know if there are any DMs still around that had any involvement in it. I enjoyed being a part of the story and the RP, but because of military service I have had to vanish a lot over the years and never got to do as much with Ave as I wanted and have many interesting adventures that were never disclosed or completed. The Sundered Man arch, the entries that follow this, are mostly intended to bring some resolution to some of those plots. If anything I write conflicts with server lore or is an over-reach, it is written in a way that it can be dismissed as Avelyn's delusions and periods of insanity. Otherwise, I hope casual readers enjoy it.
The Sundered Man 02 - Beyond the Black Mirror
Avelyn’s eyes opened. It took some time for his eyes to adjust to the dark and dispel the fear that he had been blinded. He lay on ground that chaffed his palms and cheek with the texture of brick. As his hands clenched and balled into fists, the sting of fresh cuts snaked across the back of his hands. Perhaps it was that pain alone that helped him cling to his memory. He remembered how he got where he was. He remembered the farm and the mirror. He remembered the passage beyond.

He pushed himself up. He rose to his feet though his body ached all over. He had a task to complete. His foe tried to rob his mind again, he knew it. Perhaps pain was how he could anchor his memories. He echoed his mission in his thoughts. It was his mantra now. Keep going.

His arms stretched to understand the change in his surroundings, but could not even extend fully before he felt the grating touch of brick on either side of him. It rose at least as far as high as he could reach. There was only a path forward in the dark, and a wall behind him.

His senses were repressed. He could hear far off mournful wind and peels of thunder, but felt and saw nothing. No breeze. No lightning. Just the dark. The terror that radiated through this place was strong here, swallowing him in the darkness. How could he complete his journey, when he could not even see the path ahead. Panic finally got to him. He was frantic. He searched for something, anything, even if he had to strike flint and steel for sparks of light. All his hands found, were a face in the wall.

At first he recoiled. It wasn’t stone, it was flesh. It was the only warm thing in that dark place. Tentatively he reached out again. The skin of that face felt stretched over the stone like a canvas and pinned in place. No body, no figure, was on this side of the wall to be found. A gruesome trophy, he thought, until it gasped in fear. It was the voice of a woman. It was pained and barely able to form words above a whisper.

“Don’t look up” it warned him between sobs.

He shook his head. This could have been another trap, but it felt more like a warning. She was placed at the start of this maze because she was meant to be found; this was a brutal deterrent. He chose to reply, “I can’t see anyway. Who are you?”

The whimper in her voice was pitiful, “He dragged me here. If you look up, you will be able to see, but then you must see everything. Hide in the dark, as long as you can.”

He stepped back. Her words offered little hope. Hiding was not an option. Cowering in the dark, hoping to never be found would accomplish nothing. His choice was already made. Keep going.

Avelyn’s head tilted back, gaze climbing up to slowly pierce the dark. The higher he looked the more he saw. There was no ceiling. His eyes were turning skyward. The walls rose higher than he could ever imagine, but above those walls he could start to make out bright red tines of lightning snaking behind distant clouds. At least that was what he first thought. They weren’t clouds. They were bodies; just an endless mass of them. A sea of naked and tormented bodies, trapped in the sky as they crawled over each other, each one desperate not to be pulled back to the bottom of what he could only describe as a mass grave of agonies. When thunder peeled inside the bloat of mournful figures a crimson light rolled inside the dense pockets of those anguished souls and violently expelled some of their infinite number in torn pieces to fall gently from the sky. That was when he realized it wasn’t the wind wailing, it was the damned.

His lungs and heart had frozen in his chest, and his eyes were wide as he watched the scorched torsos and limbs lazily plummet out of his sight. He forced himself to breath. Forced himself to look away. He could see in the dark now. He could see the face in the wall. Her stretched face looked as if it tried to weep but her eyes were just empty pits of gouged flesh.

“I am sorry," the face lamented. “I am so sorry. You can’t stop seeing now. Neither can I.”

His heels ground against the floor as he turned on them. There was nothing he could do for her. So he pressed on. He could see, not far, but enough that the shadows receded ahead of him. The brick walls felt as if they went on forever, but that didn’t matter. He compelled one foot to step before the other.

Keep going.

[MidnightSyndicate]

OOC Disclaimer - This was a widely unresolved plot line that is years old. Most of the characters involved are dead, or their players are no longer active, and I don't know if there are any DMs still around that had any involvement in it. I enjoyed being a part of the story and the RP, but because of military service I have had to vanish a lot over the years and never got to do as much with Ave as I wanted and have many interesting adventures that were never disclosed or completed. The Sundered Man arch, the entries that follow this, are mostly intended to bring some resolution to some of those plots. If anything I write conflicts with server lore or is an over-reach, it is written in a way that it can be dismissed as Avelyn's delusions and periods of insanity. Otherwise, I hope casual readers enjoy it.
The Sundered Man 03 - The Maze

The evils of what he had seen, of what he had experienced, didn’t lessen over the breadth of his long march. The hall went on forever. It turned at times. It changed course. Sometimes it felt like the ground was at a faint incline. But never did another path branch from the one he followed. No amount of time did anything to alleviate the sense of peril that stalked him in that place. The sight of the sky above him, the bodies just drifting like leaves in the wind, would never permit it.

How many of them were real? How many of those people were victims of this place, of its master? Could Avelyn expect to be added to that cadaverous exhibition like a painting in a gallery? No. His transgressions would likely earn him something more unique, like the face in the wall. There was no bargain to be made. No room left to question his choices. The decision had been made the moment he set foot in that awful place.

The walls were tighter now. They brushed and scratched at his shoulders as he walked. He hadn’t noticed that the passage was narrowing. How far back did it start? He pondered using the clinch to climb up, but had to fight the urge to look that way again. No, it was best if he didn’t. There was no reason to assume anything would make sense in this place. The walls could possibly go up forever. Or just long enough for him to be exhausted, and slip, and fall, and break every bone in his body in a miserably long descent.

He turned sidelong, and began to sidestep. That was when he heard it. Something else was in the halls, beyond his sight. It was moving, and it sounded for all the world like someone was choking angrily. He froze, listening to it, thinking maybe another visitor to this pit was in danger. It was back the way he came, but it sounded like multiple voices, the same awful and frustrated gagging sound. He kept his eyes behind him, and kept inching forward.

At the last turn he had made something crept in disjointed gestures around the corner. It looked like two men, ripped off at the torsos and sewn together; one half arching and twisting above the other, using spindly long arms and boney fingers to pull itself along the walls of the maze. The lower torso had short but stocky and pummeling arms that it used to fling itself into sudden hurried hurdles. The entire worming form was held together and its every gesture stiffened by leather bindings that enveloped their eyes, and limbs, binding them to one another in a perpetual arching shape that snapped in a series of tugs and resistance. Their mouths were once gagged by those straps, but their jaws had grown out from under them, distended by the tightness. They were riveted with slender silver spikes that staked out of joints and organs with the intent of holding them together as much as to inflict pain. They began to lumber Avelyn’s way.

He had nothing to defend himself with. His head turned forward, and he pushed. He hurried as much as he was able in the awkward confinement. It didn’t take long before it was too tight even for him to turn his head and look back. He could see where the walls opened ahead, but it was getting tighter, harder to move. That thing was not far behind him. He could hear its choking fits hacking just behind arm’s reach. He could hear it twisting, bone displacing and disjointing, to squeeze in behind him.

This wasn’t his foe. This was a watchdog. This thing was adapted to this environment. His heart was racing. He could feel the brick walls grinding against the side of his face. His fingers raked and clawed for any purchase to keep pulling, but he felt stuck. Progress was made in precious and futile inches now. The creature that occupied his shadow was less bothered. He could hear the silver spikes that riddled its body scraping between the walls. He could feel its hot breath on his neck.

As his leading foot set just beyond the opening he felt hands, a nail, fingers sharpened from etching stone, tugging at his arm. It was trying to drag him back. He clamped a trembling hand just around the corner, and clung. It raked as its strangled sounds become more agitated and fervent. His arm was being mauled. Deep channels were being ripped and torn in sinew and muscle. Screaming, he hooked a heel around the corner of the wall, then slide his arm around, and finally he pulled. His cheeks were marred and scraped from pressing between the bricks. He felt as if the press might crush his skull as pressure welled inside his head and skin scraped stone. Mercifully, the sleeve of the arm being grabbed and raked tore and gave way, allowing him slip free ragged and mangled, but with both all limbs still attached.

Avelyn sprung around to gape at the narrow passage and watch the creature already retreating with the torn bloody sleeve of his coat in its hands. A pitiful consolation as its mangled and abstractly disjointed form slithered away. It had contorted impossibly to fit as far as it did. The spikes that held it together would not allow its broken body to squeeze any further. It wasn’t until long after Avelyn was certain it was gone that he turned around to see what else awaited him.

He was greeted by steps. Brick stairs that hugged and spiraled the walls of a massive chasm too far to see across. They descended into further darkness. They were wide enough for two men to pass, but nothing was emplaced on the inner side to prevent one from falling off and descending into the pit. The nightmare never ends. He took the first step leading down into the gaping maw of what seemed like a dark and bottomless well.

[MidnightSyndicate]

OOC Disclaimer - This was a widely unresolved plot line that is years old. Most of the characters involved are dead, or their players are no longer active, and I don't know if there are any DMs still around that had any involvement in it. I enjoyed being a part of the story and the RP, but because of military service I have had to vanish a lot over the years and never got to do as much with Ave as I wanted and have many interesting adventures that were never disclosed or completed. The Sundered Man arch, the entries that follow this, are mostly intended to bring some resolution to some of those plots. If anything I write conflicts with server lore or is an over-reach, it is written in a way that it can be dismissed as Avelyn's delusions and periods of insanity. Otherwise, I hope casual readers enjoy it.
The Sundered Man 04 - The Well

As with every part of that stronghold, time was an abstract. With no way to count its passage, Avelyn felt insanity tightening its hold over him like the fingers of a cold hand digging into his brain. The scenery never changed. The well in the darkness went on forever, and more than once he began to ponder the futility of his quest and if he had not been wandering in circles. His hand dragged over his face in the unnatural dark half expecting a beard to have grown as time perpetually bled away from him.

Perhaps that is why the smallest sound was able to give him pause. The grinding of stone beneath his boots came to an abrupt halt. His head tilted, catching the ghost of an echo as it died in the air. Again, time lost its meaning as he waited and listened, not daring to move or breath. He heard it again, clearly and without the sound of his own step to trample it this time. It sounded like a droplet of a single silver tear.

Then came another. Then another. Their intervals were still unpredictable, but more frequent. His hand extended. This time it struck his sleeve, then the back of his hand. Rain? It was warm, and it smelled of copper. He looked up again, up through the well that he had been travelling for countless hours and seemed to have made so little progress. It was blood, and more of it fell to streak his brow and cheek. It started gently, pelting his shoulders. When the thunder rolled, he could see a storm was coming. He had to move.

His pace grew with urgency as the sanguine rain grew in intensity. He knew not what it meant, but cared little to find out. Already the blood was streaking and staining the stairs. Some pools congealed and sucked at his boots, others were slick and made him teeter dangerously before regaining balance.
He felt heavy as the storm plastered him with blood. His clothes clung to him, hindered him, making it harder to keep himself from falling as the pools grew and began to trickle onto the next steps, flowing down the stairs of the pit. Struggle quickly turned to gruesome danger as a torso spattered against the wall just shy of him, tossing viscera and gore with a heavy sickly squelch and wet thud.

His heart caught in his throat, Avelyn knew what was happening before he even looked up. The bodies were falling from the sky. The storm was bringing with it a gale of carnage. Limbs, heads, and all that the lightning had obliterated into pieces was descending now. Caution be damned, Avelyn ran. He slipped many times in the growing violence of the storm, each time the rough environment scraped and took skin as a toll for his hurry, or battered his body and bones, but each time he kept himself from going over the ledge.

No matter how fast he fled or how many times he picked himself back up, he could not outrun evil in its own dominion. The pit never seemed to relent in its descent, no matter how many steps were put behind him, but all he could do was keep running. He didn’t see the same parts strewn about as he did. It gave him a glimmer of hope; hope that it wasn’t a circle, hope that he wasn’t racing on the treadmill, hope that there was a bottom. That hope was dashed by the roar.

This time, sound did not give him pause, did not halt his step. He looked back as he ran, and he could see the tide of blood that had spilled into the well, racing down behind him. Massive, engulfing, it only grew as it spilled in all directions and chased him down. He couldn’t outrun it. He tried, even in that futility he never dared to surrender. Even as the wave of blood collided with him, pummeling harder than he expected, he grabbed and clutched, raw fingers split and torn clutching to the steps from which his body dangled as the endless weight of the wave dragged him off the edge of the spiral steps and continued to roll off his shoulders.

He tried hard, but no man could escape his own hell. The last thing he felt as his fingers slipped and the wave carried him into the dark of the pit was the sensation of his gut churning and roiling within as relented to the unyielding call of gravity as it dragged him screaming further into the nightmare.

[MidnightSyndicate]

OOC Disclaimer - This was a widely unresolved plot line that is years old. Most of the characters involved are dead, or their players are no longer active, and I don't know if there are any DMs still around that had any involvement in it. I enjoyed being a part of the story and the RP, but because of military service I have had to vanish a lot over the years and never got to do as much with Ave as I wanted and have many interesting adventures that were never disclosed or completed. The Sundered Man arch, the entries that follow this, are mostly intended to bring some resolution to some of those plots. If anything I write conflicts with server lore or is an over-reach, it is written in a way that it can be dismissed as Avelyn's delusions and periods of insanity. Otherwise, I hope casual readers enjoy it.
The Sundered Man 05 - The Pit

In blood, one does not drown. One can drown in water, where the viscosity moves and is displaced by motion and force until exhaustion wins and the endless patience of water pushes you to its depths. Blood, is not so easily compelled. When it seeps into the nostrils it is more invasive, air and bubbles do not escape so much as wall up to fill one’s head with pressure. It seals the eyes, and the longer it clings to you the more it weighs you down. It smothers you.

It was only by being able to grasp at the disembodied remains that fell from the sky that Avelyn was able to push himself to its surface, climbing the dead like a ladder in a lake of blood. Even as his head broke the surface, long webbing strands of mucus thick blood clutched at him refusing to let him go. Tearing away and shedding his coat and shirt granted him enough mobility in his limbs to pull himself along the walls with his eyes still gelled shut until by mercy alone he was able to find  the slope of a shallow side to pull himself onto.

Brick. Always the damnable and coarse scape of brick against his skin as he crawled exhausted up the slope, slipping now and again as its incline grew steep. When he felt level ground again, he pulled himself onto it, and collapsed. Curling up and gasping, his neck and limbs were wrought with veins that bulged from escaping the suffocating death. The lake behind him stilled to a placid silence after the escape of its defiant flotsam. His body had no more strength left in it from the trials of his prison. Painted in the remains of so many that failed before him, he had nothing clean with which to wipe his eyes, so he laid there as he greedily drank in the stale air until his breathing stilled to a slumbering pace, alone and terrified in the dark.

His eyes opened to the grind of grit in them. The blood had dried and flaked enough for him to see with great discomfort. Beyond the lapse it took for the gore to dry and encrust him, he had no way to tell how long he had laid on the ground like a new born making its violent entrance into life. He was immediately aware of how cold it had become. His breath twisted in the crisp air before his face. Clutching his arms around himself, he abandoned his boots as climbed to his feet in a shivering fit. They were too heavy and ruined now for his withered condition to drag along. Like the maze at the start, the passage was wide enough for one man to walk through unhindered, but this time there was a low ceiling and a passage that ended within sight with a single iron door.

Avelyn summoned all the strength he could muster from the second wind that a potential exit had inspired in him. He stumbled and trembled down the hall looking every bit like a morbid marionette as the distance became paces and the paces became inches. He leaned on the door for a rest only to find that his diminished weight was more than enough for it to easily sway open and deliver him into the talons on the other side that ripped into his collarbone and pectorals to violently drag him deeper within. The door slammed shut behind.

[MidnightSyndicate]

OOC Disclaimer - This was a widely unresolved plot line that is years old. Most of the characters involved are dead, or their players are no longer active, and I don't know if there are any DMs still around that had any involvement in it. I enjoyed being a part of the story and the RP, but because of military service I have had to vanish a lot over the years and never got to do as much with Ave as I wanted and have many interesting adventures that were never disclosed or completed. The Sundered Man arch, the entries that follow this, are mostly intended to bring some resolution to some of those plots. If anything I write conflicts with server lore or is an over-reach, it is written in a way that it can be dismissed as Avelyn's delusions and periods of insanity. Otherwise, I hope casual readers enjoy it.
The Sundered Man 06 - The Inner Sanctum

The monster did not suffer the intrusion kindly. The room, if it could even be called that, was steeped in frigid dark that spawned an ankle high fog. Against it the demon was a more opaque black. It’s shape was a very crude imitation of a man with the horns of a ram, a walking silhouette made of splintered shadows, with two pinpoints of light deep where eyes should be, like cold chips of metal catching a glimmer moonlight in the night. Its limbs never seemed consistent in length, but still it always towered over Avelyn.

For some time until now it had made a meal of Avelyn, savoring him as it feasted on his memories, his dreams, and his mind like a glutton. But by coming here, he had become more trouble than the feast was worth. This made his captor even more furious. This was its lair, its world, a place that was an extension of itself and its will. That much became painfully obvious as a short brick wall burst from the ground for the demon to smash Avelyn through with a strength he could not rival even at his peak. His spine and ribs snapped from the force to leave him in a crumbled heap among the jagged rubble that pressed against his blood caked body.

It loomed over Avelyn. It had no mouth, no face, no lips with which to speak, but its voice crept from all corners of the dark like the cawing of a volt of vultures choking on smoke.

Idiot.

Fool.

Worm.

What hope had you to come here alone?

Barely a piece of a broken man.


The strength in Avelyn’s body was gone. Breathing hurt. Moving hurt. One eye refused to open anymore, and the one that did was bloodshot from the grinding of grit that had accumulated under its lids. His spine was splinters, and his lungs were filled with grains of earth that turned his breath to a wheeze. Despite all this, with his body bent and snapped over backwards, his lips twisted into a wicked and toothy smile.

“Who said I came here alone?” Avelyn’s voice snaked from his split lips as a blade ripped through the darkness in a blur of runes that each added its own hue of light to the enchanted steel, a sword in the night that bite ravenously into the demon.

It recoiled in bitter surprise as it flattened into a shadow that streaked across the ground to rise again further from... another Avelyn. Fully armored, the second incarnation of Avelyn stood protectively over his maimed counterpart, his eyes set over his shield in a hateful glare at the demon and an iron resolve. The enchanted sword he carried hissed with smoke along the edge that had tasted the demon’s flesh.

Before it could understand what was happening, the demon’s voice shook the darkness as light exploded behind it with radiant silver, followed by the crack of a gunshot, forcing it to flee again, finding yet another incarnation of his prey. This one wore the lead and gold mask of an alchemist, a smoking gun outstretched in one hand, as the other pulled a roiling varnish from its satchel.

Without even a moment enough to consider which of them would suffer its fury first, the demon was once more shown the violence of action as impaling streaks of lightning erupted from its torso, and yet another incarnation walked into the fray in fine travel clothes and a wand clutched in his hand as tines of electricity arched up his arm.

Avelyn’s bloody grin widened, his eye reflecting the glimmers of the battle suddenly erupting  from all sides of their lone enemy. His voice was sharp and filled with hate, “I just needed to get far enough to let them in.”

The monster was a twisting figure that lashed out wildly in the absence of control. Being hunted and cornered was an alien experience to it, and without the ability to quickly adapt to a very real danger, it was being ripped apart by a flawlessly executed plan long in the making. Each wound it suffered made the dark expanse around them crack with slivers racing around them like the dome of a glass shell.

It tried to crawl away, to find a dark corner to meld with, but the armored simulacrum plunged its sword through the fleeing monster and pinned it to the ground. As the manifestations bearing Avelyn’s likeness closed in, the broken proxy of Avelyn watched. He wanted to watch it die. He wanted to watch it suffer. For all he had suffered, he wanted for just a moment, to not be a specter of guilt and sorrow. He wanted to change his nature, and revel in being an instrument of fury and vengeance. 

As the cracks rippled above them, they descended on the enemy that had given them cause to unite. From where he laid in agony, he screamed at the creature that had imprisoned him for so long in a cage of madness, “Get the fuck out of my head!”

The well-guarded fortress the demon had built in his victim’s mind finally shattered.

[MidnightSyndicate]

OOC Disclaimer - This was a widely unresolved plot line that is years old. Most of the characters involved are dead, or their players are no longer active, and I don't know if there are any DMs still around that had any involvement in it. I enjoyed being a part of the story and the RP, but because of military service I have had to vanish a lot over the years and never got to do as much with Ave as I wanted and have many interesting adventures that were never disclosed or completed. The Sundered Man arch, the entries that follow this, are mostly intended to bring some resolution to some of those plots. If anything I write conflicts with server lore or is an over-reach, it is written in a way that it can be dismissed as Avelyn's delusions and periods of insanity. Otherwise, I hope casual readers enjoy it.
The Sundered Man 07 - The Void

Whatever was happening now was beyond his ability to change or control. When the sanctum of the demon broke, a wave of an unseen force erupted in the chamber and swept them all out, casting them into an endless night sky. As Avelyn’s broken body drifted through a slow spiral into the dark of entropy, he took solace in knowing he had done all he could, and whatever came next was out of his hands. So he watched.

He watched the enormity of the dark around him, how it spilled on forever specked with stars. He saw the face of a world shrouded in mist, he saw a crimson moon with its many craters and ridges shaped like a monstrous face in the distance far beyond the pale moon that circled the world like a killer stalking prey. He saw his proxies twisting away. He had no idea what he was seeing any more.

Was this the demon’s work, some larger construct? The vastness of it made him feel small, but the stark and natural beauty of it lacked the stain of the abyss that had infected the rest of the demon’s lair.

It didn’t matter anymore. The hand of fate was quite literally guiding him now. The mist of the world beneath him bled and stretched out across the night sky, it’s dense fog elongating into the fingers of a hand that enveloped him.

As he could feel himself being pulled, he could hear the mist around him whisper with a hiss, No. The land of mist would not allow him escape even in the cold slow death of being flung into the void. The mist closed and tightened, filling his vision with a foggy grey as the all too familiar sensation of falling twisted his stomach one last time as the winds of his descent coursed frigidly against his body. 

The Sundered Man 08 - An Empty Room

Both of Avelyn’s eyes opened. Sprawled across stone floor, he could see he was in his armor and that he was whole. His hands pressed against the ground to lift himself to a kneel and survey his surroundings. While he was unscathed, his body still felt strained and weak. A circle of salt and powdered silver twisted within one another around him. Candles were lit along its perimeter. The ground was strewn with open tomes, a journal he had no memory of writing, another by Van Ricthen. Open on the ground before him was a ritual book of exorcisms.

Just as he began to recall everything, to understand what had happened, Avelyn’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open as bile erupted from his mouth. Black, like tar, it seeped from his eyes and nose, growing in a puddle as it spilled over the book, as it snaked along the ground toward one edge of the circle, and then another corner seeking escape. When Ave was finally reduced to a dry heave and able to gain some control over himself the blackness was starting to stretch into a shape he knew too well. It wasn’t over yet.

His movements were cumbersome and clumsy, but he had all the tools he needed. His enchanted pistol was drawn first, cracking a shot into the monstrous form that was desperately trying to flee the ruins of the old church. When the bullet bit into it the demon realized it may not be able to escape the blessed ring without a fight. Avelyn pelted it with the strongest varnish he had, erupting the ground beneath his target with motes of gold and silver light that burnt at its form with its brilliance, and used another to oil his sword as it slid from its scabbard.

The demon was stronger, but Avelyn had prepared well for the encounter. A fortune in scrolls had bestowed divine protections and might in him before the exorcism. His veins pumped with stimulants and tonics, and the ritual on once hallowed ground had weakened his enemy. Even as the Adriel’s talons ripped tendons and sinews across his face and neck, Avelyn could feel it being worn down as his sword furiously hacked and bit into the abyssal entity. Instead of his shield he favored a wand on his hand, pelting it with tongues of lightning to keep it from being able to recover.

After a bloody exchange of claws and blade, the body of smoke and tar was lesser. It bubbled and gurgled in the circle, trying to find a weak point to escape through. It struggled to keep its form. Avelyn’s sword plunged through into the ground as he glared down upon his oppressor. His fist clenched around the wand, feeling the static race up his arm.

“It was you” he hissed at it with a vitriol that poisoned his tone.

“You’re the reason Rae went mad. You latched onto her before you came for me.” Avelyn’s smoky voice, never rose or changed its pitch as lightning exploded into the crippled demon again. "She wasn't driven mad by her arcana, she was driven mad by a parasite."

It’s voice answered only in a sound that was not of this world. It wasn’t in pain, it was laughing. The world that birthed Avelyn was bound by rules older than his species. Fiends could not be slain in the material plane, only expelled back to where they spawned from. The Land of Mists however, existed in its own rules. Nothing that enters may leave. He didn’t know if that meant a demon could be truly slain here, or perhaps devoured by the mist when beaten, or forced into some other fate of damnation. But as the small crooked tines of electricity surged up the arm gripping the wand, he made it clear he had every intention of finding out.

When the Adriel screamed in pain, its voice was the cry of a thousand dying sparrows.

******

Avelyn slumped onto one of the pews that survived the decay that turned the old church into ruin. The shadow of the demon was forever scorched into once sacred ground, leaving him alone with his thoughts, and for the first time in years, a precious clarity. Within was not the squabbling of fragmented, broken, and conflicting thoughts and voices. The many were gone, forged once again into the one.

Scattered around him was the evidence of his conspiracy. In a covenant to become whole, the many splinters of what made him who he was worked in secret with one another, storing away tomes and journals, seeking information, leaving notes and messages for one another, often times so well compartmentalized that one personality knew not what they were looking for or why once they had it, all to keep the plan a secret from the Adriel.

Until today.

It was all for today.

After years of being driven insane, of the demon feasting on his shame and sorrow, hollowing him out as it possessed him, Avelyn had expected that his first sensation would be relief. Relief in his freedom, in escaping the nightmare, in knowing he wasn’t mad and that his mind was finally his own again. Instead, his face buried in his hands and he wept.

“I’m so sorry Rae.”

In a house of God, in an empty room, he could finally be alone and mourn.