Legendazona, Murdered in Life

[Xenograg]

Xenograg shares the throne of Barsi with Amaltea. As such, their joint presence is sometimes required at official functions. It has been five days since Xenograg's confrontation with Legendazona. He has worked on a plan for her every spare hour since, but such spare time is always limited. On this night, Amaltea and he preside over the second-most important ball of the social year.

The ball is just half over when Xenograg staggers on the dance floor, holding his head in pain. Guests and functionaries ask after his health. Xenograg pretends it is but a headache and retires to his throne. Amaltea comes with him.

"What is wrong?" she whispers, leaning close but aware that the entire room is watching them.

"The Dojo sanctum has been breached," he hisses. "It is Legend."

"Xeno, you cannot leave. Not yet."

"I know!" he snaps, still in pain, frustrated, and angry. Amaltea sits back on her own throne. Both Sovrans smile and watch the dancing. Both dread the coming hours, fearful of what the vengeful ghost will have accomplished by then.

[Legendazona]

The ghost probed and poked at the wards that protected the first room.
Pushing at the wards, seeking a weakness, a failing in the construct that
would let her into the forbidden room. These wards were much better than the one that had protected the public domain of the dojo, but Xenograg was not a noted sorcerer. Oh, he'd been lucky against Shakira, but he was not so formidable as many the High Priestess had known in life.

At last she found it, the chink in the armor that protected the room! She de-constructed a place sufficiently to allow her non-corporeal form into the room. This was the room with the mirror. The same mirror Alais had spoken of. It was his means of travel, his means of being in so many places at once.

It was with pure malicious glee that the ghost swirled around the room, studying the mirror.

[Xenograg]

Finally able to depart the ball, Xenograg rushes through Nestrian Palace into the private wing for the royal family. The palace also has a secret sanctum containing a mirror. Storming into his study, Xenograg throws his gilt baldric over his head. He ignores the thud of the heavy bronze sword against his hip. Next he turns to the plain wooden box on the desk with the magic lock. Opening the box, Xenograg takes out the triangular amulet within and fastens it around his neck. Lastly, the Ostego Cloak jumps off its rack from across the room at Xenograg's gesture. He pulls it over his head and strides towards the secret door. As in the Dojo, it opens on a narrow stairway down. He descends.

Xenograg's headache has him in a foul mood. Seeing Legendazona in the Barsi sanctum infuriates him.

"Legend! Damn you! You have gone too far now!"

[Legendazona]

The ghost paused in her gleeful sporting about the room as her arch nemesis stepped down the stairs.

"Well, well, it seems the ever watchful guard dog has come to protect his property. Too late Xeno, I have the key to your travel, and I am not finished checking out all of my options!"

With that, the ghost flowed over and through the sorcerer towards the stairs.

[Xenograg]

Xenograg does not reply to Legendazona's gloating, but he does speak: a single word.

"Zregohrmeithuun!"

Chaos engulfs the Barsi sanctum as the trigger word activates a contingency spell. The mirror shatters as a black maw of a portal opens. Seemingly open to a vacuum, the portal sucks in everything in the room -- including the vengeful spirit of the priestess.

The portal closes. The sanctum is completely empty. Bare minutes later, Amaltea arrives. The whole palace had shaken as if from an earthquake. She descends the stairs to find the mirror and everything else gone from the sanctum. As foreboding as the scene is, Amaltea knows things are much worse. She cannot sense Xenograg through the amulet she wears. Once more, Amaltea can only worry and hope that her husband will return alive.

"Not again...," she laments.

[Legendazona]

Chaos erupted before the ghost could ascend the stairs.

The mirror she'd used to arrive opened with a vacuum even she could not escape, everything was sucked into the darkness....including the watch dog.

They were locked into the yawning darkness together....

[Xenograg]

The disorientation from being sucked through the sorcerer's portal fades, leaving Legendazona with a strange feeling -- that of falling. She has no physical body, so how can see fall? Nevertheless, that is the sensation her mind receives. She wills herself to stop all movement and float in one place. Nothing changes, and her descent continues. Legendazona does not understand how this can be. Where is she?

The falling sensation is suddenly replaced with an even stranger one: of hitting bottom! Legendazona is completely surprised and just lays there. She realizes that she is not feeling any pain, only a new disorientation caused by the instantaneous deceleration. This also fades quickly, and Legendazona pushes herself up onto hands and knees. She looks around at her environment.

Everything is dark grey. The ground is barely discernable from the air (both arbitrary concepts of reference, she knows). The ground has a rough surface but is otherwise a single solid, dry piece. The air is likewise dry but hazy. Visibility is only about one hundred feet in any direction.

'As dry, boring, and unimaginative as the Sorcerer himself,' she thinks. 'Now where is he?'

[Xenograg]

"Over here, Your Grace," announces Xenograg as he walks out of the gloom. Legendazona snorts at his use of the honorific. Xenograg approaches within twenty feet of her. "You have pushed me too far, Legendazona. I will not suffer you any longer."

"Hah! You cannot kill me again, Xenograg. You cannot even stop me, merely delay me!"

"You are wrong. Here, in this place between life and death, I can destroy you...with this!"

Xenograg brandishes an engraved hexagonal bronze talisman. Legendazona does not doubt it is imbued with magic. Xenograg crouches into a ready stance. He holds the talisman, fingers around its edge, and extends his arm--aiming it at her.

[Legendazona]

He dared use her honorific? The ghost watched him as he informed her that she had pushed him too far.

She floated in the place between life and death with impunity, but his crouch and the obviously magic talisman worried her.

As he aimed it at her, she rushed him with a wail, seeking to freeze his hand before he could trip the spell within the talisman.

[Alais d Nitesong]

My discussion with Xenograg was disturbing. Legend had died hating my children, but she had always focused on them. Why had she suddenly turned on Xeno? What had prompted the Druidess to go after an outsider to our world?

I sat on the balcony overlooking the grounds of I’ Taurn pondering these things.

She had never accepted Ulysses, and when news of our children reached her, she had tried to poison me, and kill them, but she had died shortly thereafter.

We had had years of peace from her ghost. Years of quiet in which Telemachus and Alia Anor had grown to young adults, ready to step into the world in their own rights. What had broken those years of quiet?

The night creatures were going about their business of feeding and hunting as I considered what may have triggered her return now, in this point in time. Each potential reason I dismissed as simply too absurd. She had been unbending in life, and certainly in death, but what had brought the woman back now?

Alia Anor was no danger to her sense of right and wrong, she was buried within the confines of that Temple. There was no fear of her taking the reins of Nitesong. Telemachus was old enough and doing a fine job of managing the Sidhe, but he had no wife, and no children to further taint Legend’s notions of right and wrong. She had not known of Ulysses return, so it could not be the return of my Lifemate that had set her upon this course.

What then?

The dogs joined me in the coolness of the night air. Myr laying at my feet as I considered the actions that had driven Xenograg to his entrapment of my old friend. Legend had moved into his Dojo, and committed the ultimate sin of violating his private sanctum and using his mirror to travel to Barsi and threaten his family on their homelands.

Why?

Vengeance? Spite? Retribution? None of it made any sense.

Ozy landed on the railing of the balcony, and I nodded to him. It was the first time I had seen him since Ulysses return. They had spent a great deal of time on Jacynth, and it was almost as if they were giving me the space to resolve the chaos in my heart.

I asked Ozy then if he could make sense of the High Priestess’ actions. He is capable of considering such permutations and calculating the odds for each possibility, but I did not truly expect a solution from him.

Ozy blinked his golden eyes at me. “Lady Alais, the most probable reason for her return now is that she has only now become capable of doing physical damage. It took her that long to develop the strength as a spirit to do more than keen and wail.”

[Xenograg]

Legendazona can still move as fast as a spirit. She flies up and around in an irregular course. Xenograg attempts to track her with his arm but cannot keep his aim. Legendazona is watching him carefully, waiting for her foe to change his tactics.

And he does. Legend sees him rise from his aiming stance. Xenograg appears to be preparing to pursue her in the air. That will not matter, though. Legend stops in mid-air and lashes out with all the energy she can muster. Xenograg staggers and the talisman is knocked from his hand; it lands almost ten feet away. The two combatants rush for the talisman.

Legendazona wins the race. She laughs mockingly at Xenograg, the talisman safely in her hands.

"Foolish man! Perhaps I should slay you with your own weapon."

Xenograg does not reply. He just stands there without any sign of fear or frustration. Then he smiles -- a dark, cold smile. Legendazona's own smile dies on her lips. She looks down at the talisman in horror, and too late feels its magic working upon her. She screams as her essence is sucked into the prison.

"Nooooooooooooooo.........!"

The bronze medallion makes a dull ring on the ground as it lands. Xenograg walks over and picks it up. Legendazona had expected a direct confrontation with Xenograg -- some sort of honorable fight, not a trick. It was her assumption and mistake.

"You are correct, Legendazona. I cannot destroy you, merely delay you. Perhaps you will get free someday, a few centuries from now. Perhaps." He tucks the talisman into a pocket and begins the spell to transport him home again.