Originally Posted by
Seizer
Finally caught up with Alisaire an her amulet. Here's what it had to say along with killing me.
As the amulet vibrates in response to your song, the world darkens around you, and even your voice seems distant and unimportant. What matters is the pain, which permeates every joint in your body, and the pressure of the shackles on your wrists. Every lashmark and bruise burns with a deep, dull ache, but the despair and hopelessness run more deeply than the ache. There is no information to cling to, no face in which to spit, no sword to grasp; there is only the dull red glow from the brazier, the choking smells of smoke and blood, the bars of the cell, and the shackles.
As your verse ends, color and light return to the world around you, and the stench of burning flesh fades.
Roundtime: 15 sec.
The vibration of the amulet in response to your voice summons you back into the vision. You see the inside of a white silk tent, and a kneeling elven prisoner, bound and shackled. Two armor-clad skeletons wielding spears stand on either side. Blood courses down the Illistim man's cheek from a cut above his left eye, and a patchwork of welts, as well as burn-marks cover his bare torso.
The man lifts his head and snarls, "Why do you mock me again? I know it is only a dream."
"No," responds a harsh, rasping voice. "Take up the challenge, and I offer you freedom. All you must do is claim this and place it in my hand..."
As your field of view shifts in the vision, you see an alabaster-skinned hand, so heavily scarred that it nearly appears deformed. The hand dips into a gleaming black ora bowl and withdraws a clear, spherical crystal. The rasping voice asks, "Do you accept my challenge, or shall I give you back to Morvule's servants?"
Hope wars with fury upon the elf's face before he finally chooses. "I accept."
The vision fades out with the end of the verse.
Roundtime: 16 sec.
With the first notes of your loresong, the amulet responds almost eagerly by plunging you back into the vision. Beneath a tattered black pavilion, a pair of cringing pages are assisting the elven prisoner in donning heavy steel platemail. They look at him with mingled envy and hatred, and, as one of the pages steps forward to fit the helm to the man's head, the page takes the opportunity to spit in his face. In the next instant, the page doubles and falls, screaming, as a skeletal guard's spear disembowels him.
The prisoner spares only a glance for the messily dying page before staring at a high iron gate. Beyond the gate, a makeshift arena may be seen, and only shadows are visible past the opposite gate. In the center of the arena stands a tall chalice, and a sickly green flame dances above the cup. Black streams of smoke curl from incense burners on each side of the chalice.
The vision fades as your verse dies away.
Roundtime: 15 sec.
Your mind's eye returns to the elven prisoner outside the arena, and you watch as a cloaked figure comes into view beyond the iron gate. Bloodstains mar the front of her tunic, and fresh scarlet flows freely from the razern bracelets about each wrist, which open new gashes with each of the figure's movements. The clear crystal sphere glimmers in her palm before she drops it into the chalice. She retreats again with slow, measured steps.
The prisoner chooses a broadsword and a tower shield from a rack nearby, and the near gate swings open with a shrill cry of tortured metal. The opposite gate swings open as well, and a similarly armored combatant steps through that gate into the arena.
Both prisoners turn their heads as a harsh voice cuts across the battlefield: "Hand me the crystal, and you will go free." As the prisoners move forward, shifting their attention warily between one another and the burning chalice, they do not seem to hear the rasping whisper that follows: "Lord Mularos, Thy Whip consecrates the ending of these lives to Thee."
Roundtime: 14 sec.
As the amulet vibrates again in response to your song , you see the two armored prisoners come together with a great crash of blades and armor in the center of the makeshift arena. Sword crashes against sword, shield slams against shield, ground is lost and regained and lost again. They circle around the chalice, and the green flame flares as they approach, fading away again as they retreat. The tendrils of black incense coil and sway like snakes made of shadow.
Suddenly, one of the combatants growls ferociously and flings himself at the other man. In a clatter of platemail, both go down, but one has the advantage and rises first. Wielding his heavy broadsword like a dagger, he brutally stabs down at his fallen opponent's face. The visor gives way, and the other man jerks horribly, flailing like a skewered cockroach before falling still.
The vision fades from your mind as the man dies.
Roundtime: 27 sec.
The image of the victorious prisoner returns to your mind. A grimace of self-hatred contorts his features as he throws down his sword and helm. He stalks to the burning chalice and shoves his gauntleted hand into its depths, but he comes up without the prize. He fishes around a second time, but, again, finds nothing. With a roar of fury, he turns, but a harsh voice cuts him off --
"The crystal abhors the touch of metal. Only flesh can claim it."
Desperation overrules apprehension. The prisoner casts aside his gauntlet, and, with only a brief moment of hesitation, reaches into the serpentine green flame, and past the flame down into the seething liquid in the chalice. Tears of agony shine in his eyes, and every tendon in his throat stretches tautly as he searches for the crystal. When he withdraws his hand this time, white blisters are rapidly forming all along his skin, but the transparent crystal sphere is nested within his curled fingers.
"Bring the crystal to me. Place it in my hand, and I will let you go," the unseen woman says harshly. As the prisoner begins to walk, the vision fades.
Your own hand is tingling slightly, though you notice nothing strange about it.
Roundtime: 17 sec.
The amulet responds instantly to your voice, and the vibrations bring you the image of the cloaked woman facing the elven prisoner. Her pale grey eyes are narrowed with hunger as she stretches out her scarred alabaster hand. Blood runs from her razern-braceleted wrist down to her palm.
The prisoner reaches out to drop the crystal into her palm -- but he cannot. His muscles bulge and strain, but his fingers only curl more tightly around the crystal. In desperation, he wrenches at the locked fingers of his right hand with his left, but wisps of steam begin to trail from beneath his left gauntlet cuff, and the rising blisters on his right hand pop and bubble like the surface of boiling water. As he screams in agony, matching blisters begin to form on his neck, and then the flesh of his face turns an angry, seared red hue.
The bones of his right hand break through his skin and fuse together, just as the flesh begins to fall from his face in long, dark red strips. The woman does not move a muscle as he dies at her feet His screams fade into gargling, then into bubbling, then into silence, and finally his armored skeleton lies still in a mass of steaming carrion.
As the last notes die in your throat, the fleeting image in your mind shows blood pooling in the woman's scar-ravaged hand, and the way in which her hungry eyes relax with satisfaction.
Roundtime: 17 sec.
The amulet responds to your song with a vision of the scarred woman. She draws a loop of razern wire around the skeleton's fused hand and neatly removes it from the corpse. Through the gaps between the mutilated former fingerbones, the crystal sphere glows with an angry red hue.
"An interesting trophy, Whip." The voice is male, and, as the speaker comes into view, you see that he has slate grey eyes and braided white hair. "What do you plan to do with it?" A crimson vaalin symbol of Sheru hangs around his neck.
"If you wish it, it is yours," she answers immediately.
The Sheruvian priest laughs scornfully. "I have souls enough," he says, waving her back. "Keep this one."
"No -- it will be a present," the woman harshly says, "to one who has pleased me well -- one with whom you may be pleased, also."
The old man reaches out to touch the surface of the bone. With his touch, the angry red glow dies, and a ripple of blackness shivers across the surface of the blood red crystal. "A playmate for him," he says offhandedly, and turns to walk away.
The woman traces the line of one of the scars on her throat, leaving a trail of scarlet stains from her bloody palm. She bows her head, and, though she does not speak, her thoughts ring through your mind, just as harshly formed as her voice: "Lord Mularos, be pleased with this Suffering."
The vision slips away, leaving you with black spots dancing before your eyes and the taste of blood in your mouth.
Roundtime: 15 sec.
The world wavers and fades around you. All forms slowly dissolve into an even, unrelenting haze, and all colors turn to red -- the shades range from the bright crimson of freshly spilled arterial blood to the near-black of old blood drifting on blue water. Your own voice fades away, and you can hear nothing at all but a soft clicking and scraping somewhere in the distance. In the instant you hear the sound, every sense attunes to it, and your heart races with terror. You sense that you are being watched, and you sense the simple, easy malevolence flowing from the being that made those sounds. Whatever it is, it hates you, just as it hates all things, but it lusts for you even as it hates you, for it wants you to be afraid. There is no doubt that it has achieved its goal. Waves of red pulse and flicker around you, and you strain your vision through the crimson void. Somewhere in the distance, you know that there waits a hint of true blackness, a single shadow cast within the sea of blood, and the fear of that shadow consumes your entire existence.
The rapid drumming of your heartbeat in your ears slowly returns you to your senses: light and sound come back, washing away the field of pervasive redness, and you remember who you are and what you are doing. Nevertheless, a deep apprehension remains with you, and you know that it would be unwise to coax further lore from this artifact.
Roundtime: 14 sec.
As you begin to sing, you are plunged instantly back into the world of featureless crimson haze. From the depths of the darkness, a tendril of true blackness coalesces, but it fades again as quickly as it came in the instant that you try to focus upon it. The corner of your left eye catches another wisp of darkness, and you whip around in panic to stare at it, but the red haze consumes that tendril as well. The sounds of scuttling and scraping fill your ears, but you cannot pinpoint a direction -- the noise comes from all sides, and it draws closer by the second. You cannot move, or even sense your own body, though your heartbeat thunders frantically through your temples.
Suddenly, a tendril of blackness materializes out of nowhere and whips across your eyes. The agony is unbelievable, with the heat of drakar and the icy cold of rhimar rolled into one to destroy your vision. In the moment of perfect anguish, the heartbeat pounding in your ears stops.
And that's when I died, funny how no death message was sent out to the lands though.
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