To R'lyeh and Back

Sometimes, the dance called life is graceful. Sometimes, you step on a toe or fall flat on your face.

Moderators: PrlUnicorn, Mairead Harker, Eregor

Locked
User avatar
Eregor
Seasoned Adventurer
Seasoned Adventurer
"You Traitorous Cur"

Posts: 304
Joined: Sun Dec 18, 2011 11:33 pm
Location: Gardenhome Tower, RhyDin

To R'lyeh and Back

Post by Eregor »

The nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh…was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. - H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”


December 17, Twilight Isle

The challenge ring was filled with countless Eregors, from both past and present, allowing to come in behind Michelle’s mystic shield to strike, winning him the second match and the challenge. “And with that the challenge is over!” called Helea. “Eregor's quick thinking.. and repositioning, gives him the lead he needed to flank Michelle's attempt at a defensive spell. Congratulations, Eregor, on becoming Keeper of Water!" She then flipped a card over. "And well tried, Michelle!"

Michelle didn't seem the least bit displeased; she took off the key and walked over to Eregor, the one whom she had battled with. "Congratulations, Eregor. I hope you enjoy —your reward!" She shoved the key against his chest, and a sudden darkness enveloped the mage, devouring him into some other time and space. The Tower of Water crumbled and fell to pieces, surely to be reformed when the Keeper returned.

"Wh-?!" As the darkness enveloped Eregor, he turned towards Rhi, their eyes meeting... and then he was gone.

----------

Another place, another time

The air was stagnant and damp, redolent with a fetid reek, and Eregor felt his gorge rising once more. He staggered to lean against a boulder encrusted with slimy moss, steadying himself as he spat thin, pale vomit upon the rocks once more. How long can I keep this up? he asked himself, looking up into the hazy sky, the sullen sun hanging there like a great eye, staring down. How long had he even been here? It felt like days, even months since Michelle--or rather, the evil that had corrupted her--had banished him to this place.

To have the Key he’d won ripped away from him, leaving him hunted and alone.

Nightgaunts circled in the distance, and the ululations of star-spawn echoed dimly as they called out praise to their dreaming lord. From where he perched, Eregor could see the city spread before him in all of its antediluvian majesty. Gargantuan monoliths and ruined towers shared an abstract geometry, with angles that shifted at the whim of the city’s dread master.

The Key to the Tower of Water was somewhere in that ruin. He could not leave the city without it, but to get it, he would have to brave the heart of the nightmare.

“In his house in R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming.” Eregor all but whispered the words, lest he attract unwanted attention. Yet if the Great Old One was dreaming, was his body there in the great, archaic temple? Or worse yet… am I in Cthulhu’s dream?

A heavy, squelching sound drew his focus away from the city, and he turned to see a hideous, wormlike creature, so dark grey in colour as to be almost black, coated with slime. Tentacles whipped out from what might have been a head, slamming into Eregor and sending him tumbling to the rocky ground. “Aaah!” As the disgusting worm slithered closer, the Time Lord scrambled away, arcane words of power on his breath. Electricity crackled around his fingers…

...and then died, as an ominous presence filled his mind, and the magic left him. Visions of a colossal figure filled his mind, a humanoid form with draconic wings, its great heat akin to a horrid cephalopod. He recognized it from the bas-reliefs found throughout the ruins, knew it at once from legends older than Time itself.

Cthulhu.

One of the worm’s tentacles wrapped around his ankle, and blindly he reached out to grab something, anything he could use as a weapon. His fingers grasped something hard and curved, and without hesitation he lashed out to stab at the slimy tentacle gripping him. The creature shrieked and withdrew, giving him the time he needed to get to his feet. Looking down, he saw what he held--a bone, likely a rib, broken off and jagged. His eyes darted about and he saw a horrifying reminder of his possible fate: a skeleton, lying where it fell, to be food for the worms, eternally reaching for…

A sword. Pitted slightly with corrosion, but serviceable enough.

As the chthonian beast scuttled closer, Eregor quickly picked up the blade and turned upon the creature, slicing deep. It screamed once more, and he struck again, and again, until it lay dead in an ichorous heap.

A second blade lay beyond the first. The poor soul must have stumbled in this ever-shifting madhouse, and been grabbed before he could reach his weapons. Kneeling beside the skeletal remains, Eregor touched the skull gently, giving silent prayer to whatever gods the man had known were able to bring him peace, and thanking him for the gift. Then he stood, and straightened the collar of his no-longer-elegant longcoat, now long since stained and torn. Hefting both swords, he turned back towards the nightmare city of R’lyeh, as the nightgaunts turned in his direction, and creatures gibbered among the Cyclopean walls..

Once more that terrible presence loomed in his mind, raking his soul with misery. You want to torment me? Drive me mad, you tentacle-faced bastard? Go ahead and try! Michelle slipped from your grasp, you couldn’t hold onto her, and you won’t hold me either!

Step by step, he approached the city, the temple, and the Key that would take him home. To his family. To Rhi.



((opening section taken from live play with Michelle and Snow))
User avatar
Eregor
Seasoned Adventurer
Seasoned Adventurer
"You Traitorous Cur"

Posts: 304
Joined: Sun Dec 18, 2011 11:33 pm
Location: Gardenhome Tower, RhyDin

Re: To R'lyeh and Back

Post by Eregor »

The sun had risen and set a dozen times since Eregor had armed himself and turned his path towards R’lyeh. He was ragged and weary, bruised and bloody. One of his appropriated swords had finally snapped as it was torn from his grip, lodged in the carcass of a slain Gug, but he’d replaced it with a dagger from one of the robed cultists that prowled the city, chanting the name of their dead, dreaming lord.

Panting, he limped up the great steps leading into the temple proper, and wondered if Michelle had come this way, or any other of the countless poor souls who had found their way to R’lyeh and been lost. Madness and despair encroached on his senses, tempting him to give up, to give in. Pain surged through his body, and he felt a stabbing pain in his chest that had to be a broken rib or two. For a brief moment he thought of that long-dead soul whose own rib had saved him from the worm; for an even briefer moment, he wondered if that had been himself, cursed to roam back and forth in time until the madness of R’lyeh consumed him.

“No!” He would not surrender to that insanity.

A screeching roar from ahead drew his attention, and he managed a smirk as he saw robed cultists with leashed creatures, terrible beasts beyond description, advancing on him. Weariness assailed his soul once more.

From the pit of his stomach, a fierce roar welled up and he charged forward into the throng of minions. Their overwhelming numbers worked against them, as each wanted the honor of slaying him, and so they got in each other’s way. Still, he was hard-pressed and it was only the rage burning within him that drove him onward, allowing him to ignore the stabbing blades and tearing claws and tentacles that whipped at him.

Or perhaps it was something else burning, but he refused to let that particular fire consume him. Not here, not in this insanity. If he was going to die, to change, then by all Time he would see those he loved again first!

He spied the Key, set upon a pedestal like a trophy, and he felt its call. Drawing on its power, he reached out to the water within the cultists’ bodies, and he pulled. A wet sheen spread across their faces, and one by one they collapsed, crying in agony as water oozed from their skin, spreading across the temple floor and pooling in its arcane architecture. Then the screams became moans, and the moans became whimpers, and the whimpers became silence.

With slow, heavy, dragging steps, Eregor limped over to the pedestal and picked up the Key. He felt the presence of Cthulhu in his mind, one last time, taunting him, saying that he had many more minions to call upon, and the New Age would come.

With a smirk, Eregor gripped the Key, and felt its link to the Tower, to Twilight Isle, to home. He closed his eyes, and raised one hand. A tear formed in the air, through which he could see the beach, and Rhi and Heph. He stepped through, letting the rift to R’lyeh close behind him.. “Nice… try….”

The Old Soul that had been part of Rhiannon since before she took her first breath had been set free. Had one soul released or sacrificed to preserve another? The spectral form of Zapphira rose up from the female vessel that had both shielded her and held her captive; she drifted to the darkened waters. With the Key to the Tower of Water now in Eregor’s charge Zapphira, the lost grandchild of Poseidon, gave him her remaining energy to aid in purifying the waters on the Isle.

Eregor stepped forward, and then staggered, collapsing into his wife's arms. "I saw... R'lyeh... the gibberings of... his creatures... but... I came home... to you...." He felt Zapphira's essence entering the Key, and through it the lagoon, and the Tower. "Time for... a rebirth." Tired eyes looked up at Rhi with such depths of emotion. "I love you... my heart." Then they closed, and he went limp in her arms.

"Not just to me, to us, our family." Rhiannon drew Eregor close to her to warm him. "She's free, love, after all those years, she's free." She cradled him against her and murmured, "Time is on our side."

After a moment, his hands began to glow with a faint golden light. Streamers of shimmering gold rose from his face, enveloping his features, flaring to an almost blinding brilliance. Rhi held fast, unafraid. The Key, too, began to glow, a fierce blue-white gleam, while out over the lagoon, the ruins of the Tower of Water shifted and flowed like their element, climbing up, ever upwards, reshaping the Tower once more, clean and whole.

Finally the glow around Eregor faded, and he looked... different. Rich brown eyes opened beneath dark brows, and looked up at Rhi. "Hello, a chroi."

"Hello, a chroi." She smiled warmly as she curled one of her hands around one of Eregor's. "I've been preparing for this. Just in case."
Rhiannon Brock: "Explaining your transformation to the children will be a much easier task than explaining if you had been lost to us."

"You are my heart, Rhi. How could I ever be lost, with you to light my way?"



((closing section taken from live play with Rhi))
Locked

Return to “Memories and Other Dances”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest