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358 - Spectre of Bitter Anguish [Sturmblitz]
🕑 Added 2024-05-29 02:57:18 +0000 UTCThe blackwall shook in the night as its mechanisms worked. This was nothing new. The great wall had been set to gradually loosen its net, and it had been doing just that. Indeed, none were the wiser to the fact this shudder was different to the others — not even the ankhezian brothers, for they were not watching so closely as to notice.
Meanwhile, Crovacus Estoras worked in his office, typing away whilst refining his control of the Calamity Flame. He did so by using the flame to sign documents with a pen made specially for the purpose. The eye-watering cost of commissioning such a trinket had been softened by the fact it could still work as a weapon for his martial arts. The hours passed, and Crovacus drifted to sleep — a single hour of nothingness in the midst of inhuman work hours. Such was the price of ensuring everything was done as he intended it to be, the price of directly contending with the Lady in Red.
“Just a few more days, it’s almost done,” he told himself. For once it was not a lie.
In the midst of that night, Crovacus found that a traveler had arrived inside his office, bypassing all security and even his own attention. It was as if, one moment, the figure simply materialized from the shadows in the corners of the room, or perhaps stepped out of the solid wall, or hitched a ride on the aetherwave signals. The stranger’s form was shrouded in a ragged cloak of blackest black, the fabric flowing without weight. In his hand he grasped a three-sided staff of blackstone.
As he looked up, he met the stranger’s gaze. Sunken, tired eyes stared from behind a stone-still mask, as if he had plucked the head from a statue. Their pale-blue glow was as sharp as the force of will behind them, an iridescence swirling within the blue.
A strange voice, composited from two others, resounded — not in the room, but inside his own head.
“You disgrace us, Grekurian. To think it would be one of you…”
Bitterness. Acrid, severe bitterness, enough to make the bile rise in his throat.
“How…” he asked, tentatively. It was almost a whisper, as light as one’s steps ought to be in a duel to the death.
The stranger turned his head, pointing at the aetherwave transceiver box that stood off to Crovacus’ right. Without even needing to look, he noticed something and realized the implication — the sound. The sound it made when receiving a message. By the tone and intensity, it was an ultra-high-output signal.
Secondly, he noticed the absence. The lack of substance. The stranger’s form frayed at the edges, swam in place, never quite fully coherent. Despite the fact his presence subtly altered the flow of dust through the air, he wasn’t truly here. An ascended mirage, a projection in all physical dimensions. By comparison, the stranger’s aura pierced through with an alien keenness, unlike that of any living thing Crovacus had ever met. It wasn’t sharp, or pointy, or hot or cold, or any of the so very human traits that one’s aura was likely to take on.
Bitter.
So, so terribly bitter.
“Nonetheless… We cannot deny that you have done right by our kin. In turn...”
The stranger raised his staff. For a moment, Crovacus could see as a triangular halo flared to life behind his head, before the brightness became such that he could no longer see. A choking aura pressure filled the room — not by its intensity, but by the terrible sense of regret, bitterness, and exhaustion it imposed upon him. By raw strength it was lesser than what his own son put out during sparring, and yet, it took the breath from him. So terrible it was that bloody tears poured from his eyes and his heart seemed to stop — he thought the spectre was trying to kill him!
A fierce wind whipped through his office, coarse sand buffeting and blinding the governor. Before he could muster the will to defend himself, it all ceased, and he beheld that black sand had filled the corners of the room and scattered across every surface, and before him, three sheets of black stone now sat.
“Guidestones. They lead to treasures — one for the lowly soldiers, one for the prodigal sect, one for your noble line," the stranger said in both voices.
Then, his speech split, the first voice commanding: "Find them. Use them."
And the second voice finishing: "Hold out until my true return.”
The aetherwave comms cabinet emitted a hissing screech, something audibly burst inside the machine, and the spectre vanished, leaving Crovacus staring blank-eyed at what he had been left with. He had no will to try interpreting the shifting images and swimming letters that pulled at his eyes — his stomach was dancing in his gut, and his brain threatened to break his skull open from the inside. No, right now it was time for a Blue Sky Highball, not this. The drink in question was simply a highball made with Winter Peach Brandy as the spirit and Tengri’s Tears as the mixer. The violent, cloying sweetness was thinned out into a comforting cushion for any and every conceivable kind of mental anguish.
________________________________________________________
Without any fanfare, Zefaris departed for the first of many ritualistic expeditions to come. The ritual began even before her departure — she left in the dark of night, in total silence, making her way to a blitzgandr that had been stashed well outside city limits. All in the service of maintaining “stillness”.
Zelsys had taken care to ensure she, herself, did not disturb this, forcing herself into a coma-like slumber for a fixed duration. The moment she awoke, however, it was back to work. Run rounds around the sect. Check on the alchemists, each of them with deep black circles around their eyes. A few of the older ones had faint marks of daytime dust under their nostrils, but the scattered, half-empty bottles of DDLV spoke to the preferred method of mental sharpening for most. She didn’t dare actually enter the laboratory, lest she disturb the delicate work on the True Dragonheart Bolus.
Next, it was onto Ozmir. As several times before, the chef portioned out food and returned to his kitchen. He had been “working on something personal” for a while, now. Doubtlessly a matter of breakthrough utilizing the sect’s newly-bolstered resources. If anyone could use dragon flesh for his cultivation directly, it was him.
