Rickley's Bolero
"So, what now?" Eban asked.
"That's a good question." I snorted, turning my eyes about the Falls as I pondered my plans for Zimysta, Shujen, Rhar, the Bodhi Tree and its Peninsulas; plus wherever I decided to go next year. But of course, his words held a different meaning.
His words were meant for him, his brother, and his new mistress alone. Our interests, however, were far greater. Thus, I pointed to G'eldantaar to show him our way, only to withdraw reflexively once a line of divine mana was cast in my wake.
It plunged into the darkness like a luminescent lure, attracting every pair of bestial, sentient, and undying eyes to the ingrown crown of this dying spider. Yet it did not reel so much as flare. Arcana, gilded and pure, billowed like fire around the tower and rose to infuse its superficial heat into the stone, forming a veritable star in the Darkworld that pushed against the darkness like stellar radiation on celestial dust.
For the first time in its short existence, the virulent waters of purple and blue could be seen as clearly as the black grasses at its shores, the amber trees growing in the distance, and the crepuscular food chain that evolved within. Yet, I turned away from it.
Somewhat annoyed, I turned to see the darkness clinging to Eban as much as it clung to me and Sovereign Galendra, his irises blacker than night. "You can stay here, meet the others above, or bring any worthy people into your employ. The choice is yours.
"As for me," I sighed, turning. "I'm going on a walk."
As if in response to my stepping off the terrace, the remaining eyes of Zimysta flared in anger, pitting the front-right face of the cavern in Lilith's wrathful red flames. The main right eye was not the one to act, however, but the comparatively tiny one beneath it.
Tap. Tapity-tap. Tapity-tap, tap tap.
Tapity tap, tapity, tapity, tapity-tap.
The 4th House of Syndyrran Illistyn, was a fortress of webs; a labyrinth of web and bone, a cobweb of ancient archives, carved into the stone. So it was, the 4th House first heard the bolero of Rickley's drums ages before anyone else, rumbling their ancient walls, working to summon the dead to march along to the toot, toot, toot of her flute.
Thum. Thum. Thum. Thum-thum.
Carbury's horn flute traveled from one halfling to another, one hand to the next, and as things went, became tainted by the relative years of use. Coating the instrument was a film of gilded grime, splotched and stained with the black, green, purple, and red tears that wound down Rickley's face when she played. It tainted the instrument just as it did to her, corrupting its Fae essence to charm the dead, target souls, mark the living, and taint the realms.
In that order, it worked, encouraging the undead to pick up every rock, rod, and worn weapon they could find on their way to the House. Many inside felt a sense of dreariness as they heard the morbid prelude, given the fervor in which they sent their lessors to investigate.
The enemy emerged in waves from the side entrances, terraces, and the lesser House Talaste'ven, staying as far from the entrance as possible as if they could escape the sense of foreboding imposed on them.
As things were, their cowardice allowed Rickley's growing horde to march through the front entrance undisturbed. They piled into the house with the mindless fervor of the dead, uncaring of the shockwaves, blowing the bone and viscera of their comrades over them as they threw themselves against arcane barriers and other magical wards.
Hands and legs crawled aimlessly amidst the turmoil, their bodies having been crushed to dust by falling stone blocks and sliding slabs. Still, the enemy gave them a wide berth, ever fearful of the haunting bolero echoing through the house, even as they charged its source.
Rickley took the initiative by allowing the ambient light to sustain her tune while she squatted low, coiling her shadow into a spring around her legs.
The ground cracked beneath her launch, sending her rocketing toward an orcish slave, her arm cocked back like a poised fencer.
The green brute staggered at the sight, yet reacted quick enough to step into an uppercut; albeit a moment too late. Shadows sloshed around Rickley's arm as her momentum tapered and flowed into a needle-thin rapier as she thrust.
It pierced and sank into the orc's neck as she landed on his shoulder and rolled off, dragging her blade across his neck to leave a scar that glowed as bright as the gilded fires above her.
Rickley landed in a roll, coming up in the center of a group of slaves with arcana packed into her throat as she shouted. "Boom!" banging against the air hard enough to knock her assailants back.
The strongest of them dug in their heels and raised their blocks in fear of the followup, yet the only thing they felt was the thick dust settling on their skin. Their eyes turned about the darkness in search of the halfling, only to settle on the fallen orc's gilded scar as the shimmering howl of his dying song rose in pitch.
They began backpedaling as the howl morphed into a reverberating, brassy bellow and outright fled once the gilded light in his scar flared brighter, vaporizing the flesh to unveil the gleaming bones of Rickley's newest creation before the darkness assaulted it, aggregating around the light to form an incorporeal body of darkness for the twilight bones.
It roared like the trumpets of heaven before it lunged, fading into a blur that chased and herded the fleeing slaves to the place they once sought to avoid; chased by the haunting chants of Rickley's dwarven urn, leading the zombified visages of Aufa and Phoruca into the House.
She watched it all from above, where she remained lounging in a hammock of a shadow for about a dozen seconds before hopping to the pit of darkness waiting below. As she landed, her Umbra Emperor rose to stand beside her. Buke, the Gut King, looked as disgusting as ever. Fat deposits crusted with scabs hung from every patch of skin imaginable, sloshing and swaying as he swung about to survey his shitting grounds.
The forces ahead heard his first steps and spurred forward as if they feared the outcome; all but two. Aufa and Phoruca had been moving with haste from the start, their glistening mithral skeletons pocked with half-grown organs, broken bands of muscles, and patches of skin danced through the dark-filled corridor, maneuvering to the prey they set their sights on decades, or in Aufa's case, years ago.
The grand library, or whatever it was called, of House Illistyn was a voluminous labyrinth of meticulously carved stone holding a wealth of knowledge pulled from the collective minds of at least three species, from two realms, across tens of thousands of years, spread beneath an elegant chandelier of violet-crimson mana-infused crystals.
They usurped and seized it all in less than a minute.
Phoruca stormed through first, arcing through the air on an arcane pillar. She gathered the ambient darkness around a glowing spear woven with the surrounding arcana and swept her arms about, manifesting dozens more umbral arrows before a push of her hand released them.
They arced unseen in the darkness like a parliament of owls- needle-like things that elongated as they threaded the necks of the enslaved archivists and those who ruled them like needles. The bloody entrails left in their wakes remained suspended in the shadows for moments after their passing. The way they stretched from the neat holes in their necks made them look like fleshy worms; or rather, like fleshy straws. Straws that gulped down the shadows and pumped them into the newly vacant vessels.
Having been reduced to husks of flesh leaking wisps of darkness through every orifice, they rushed past the many pockets of arcana forming around their former lifeblood, carpeting every tome, scroll, and book in arcane cobwebs that, like her sister's spell, seemed to drink the potent umbral energies spreading through the house.
The arcane prowess of my fellow drow had yet to bore me. Yet, I turned my gaze away from Phoruca and Aufa to gaze upon the Celebrity of Souls, marching through the House's entrance with a radiance that could kill- literally.
Given the way she died, the sorcerous twilight I gave Rickley had adopted a poisonous nature. By default, it worked by contact, yet she could tailor it to behave in any way; including like light and darkness.
And so, the stampede of slaves spared by the undead, Phoruca, and Aufa rounded the bend to the grand foyer just as Rickley entered and faced a billowing wave of darkness that crashed over them like waters on a rocky shore, bathing them in a stellar radiance that made their bodies churn.
They dropped like flies in the face of Rickley's twilight, only for the darkness to seize them from behind, causing them to spaz and leap to their feet, stomping to the taps of Rickley's drums. They grasped onto the shields and swords decorating the statues and struck them against each other as their hips turned them around, their arms swung, and their legs stomped in cadence with Rickley's Bolero.
Strengthened by Rickley's song and enhanced by her dark light, they poured through every opening to chase those they once fled beside, eager to add more members to their macabre march. Buke claimed the path they took at once, charging up his bubbling guts to plague the library with powerful quakes as he stormed inside, only to stumble as the pustules of fat around his legs popped like balloons.
Buke's momentum sent him tumbling, rolling to smash into the nearest bookshelf-analogue and leave him dazed once he stood. He swayed on his feet- now bloodied bones coated in tattered skin- and doubled over, coughing and hacking oily phlegm from his jowls with enough gusto to force a splattering shart out of his backside.
Out of either shamelessness or necessity, Buke stood, leaned back, and let loose, ejecting a slimy, oily bile over the halls as he twisted on his feet, rocking back and forth to alternate between shitting and vomiting as if to dance to the haunting tune of House Illistyn's demise.
The putrid mixture hissed as it sloughed and settled to off-gas the most foul toxins Buke could fester, and he admired it swimmingly, bellowing boisterous laughs as he dug his hand in his shredded belly. From it came a cruelly spiked adamantine club that seemed to change Buke's persona as he reeled it back, turning him to a raging husk of a madman who sought only destruction; and filth.
The ever-present darkness pooled around his weapon before he unleashed it, creating an umbral paddle to slam against the air, causing a rebound that pulverized furniture, disintegrated decor, and crumbled supports.
Before the debris could be flung about the cavern, a spike of arcana shot out from the chandelier and detonated like a supernova. It spread a foul something across the hall, corrupting the darkness and turning it into a nebulous expanse of crimson clouds I struggled to peer through.
The toxic sludge left behind was pulled from the stone as if it had evaporated and subsequently condensed into a web of winding strands, leaving a relatively clean field of rubble to be infected by spell's the latent energies.
For what it was worth, Buke looked upon his work morphing into stone spiders, floating pikes, bolts, and torturous devices with a phlegmatic disposition; albeit because a mob of wizardly slaves stormed in from the rear entrances, led by Matron Illistyn's 6th daughter, Sinaste, demanded his attention.
Aufa, hidden near the ceiling on the far left, pounced toward her the moment she focused on her sharp visage. Yet, Buke was faster. His unburdened form streaked through the air to intercept an arcane bolt thrown by Ssapue, and only then did he fall to tend to the masses below.
Phoruca was the one to engage the bardic 5th daughter, who'd been pushed to command the lesser house from the front lines by the anomalous presence of the 4th daughter, Priestess Shurvyrae Illistyn.
Judging by the spell she cast earlier, Priestess Shurvyrae would prove to be quite the problem in the following minutes. Thus, Rickley made the priestess her highest priority, for she was not a fighter. Like Ed would in his fights, Rickley saw this grand battle for the fate of House Illistyn as nothing more than a nuisance- a bug that needed squishing.
Rickley's radiant poison flared as she took flight, climaxing her haunting bolero with the twangs of plucked spider strings and the morbid wails of the priestess's divine domain fighting for existence. Beneath her, the slave army reeled in the face of the undead pouring in through every hole, howling and stomping to the tapity tap-tap besetting the house's foundation.
To the left, Aufa and Sinaste percussed the house with fire, ice, wards, and domains as they battled each other for dominance over the arcana. With my overwatch, Aufa's victory of such a battle was a guarantee, forcing the House wizard to tap into her Arcana Well to even the field. Thus, Aufa tapped the nigh-infinite arcana within hers and poured it into her voice.
<<"Crepuscular Crypt!">>
As if someone flicked a light switch, the burning red that plagued the house burnt out, having been replaced with a gilded radiance suffused into space itself. It was almost like the very air was emitting photons. Yet, darkness persisted in spots along the wall and central space, acting as refuges once Rickley's radiance bloomed to a light akin to the Summer Sun.
The slaves, emboldened by Ssapue's songs, faltered as the searing light made their stomachs churn; teary-eyed, the bardic drow scrambled in an attempt to shield herself from the baleful light and distance herself from the tenacious Phoruca using the only means available. They darted to the alcoves of darkness scattered on the walls and dove into the pits of shadows sprawled across the center, only to send a spine-tingling tremble through my darkness once they felt Aufa's influence on it.
Her domain attacked from all angles, enveloping the slaves, Sinaste, and Ssapue in bladed umbral tendrils that coiled around their limbs, grinding into their flesh as they pulled them deeper into the umbral sarcophagi that birthed them, sealing them in a crypt of light and darkness.
For what it was worth, Priestess Shurvyrae listened to the fading screams of her siblings and subordinates without a care in the world. Her training, sociopathy, devotion to Lilith, or a combination of the three, kept her eyes on the lookout for the halfling hidden in a curtain of light above while her chitinous armor drank the poisonous light like wine; at least until she spotted the unknown creature poised before the entrance.
Gerry, Rickley's giant poison dart frog of an Uma, bathed in Rickley's radiance while blocking off the exit, absorbing the poison through its skin at twice the rate of the Priestess' armor in ways that made its black and yellow patterns swirl. Having never seen such a creature before, it demanded her focus once its slime began to seep onto the stone at its feet, and when it went to croak, she reacted on impulse- an opening that spelled her doom.
A curtain of light above Priestess Shurvyrae unveiled Rickley Ravenbrook, descending at the speed of darkness with a mace of a baton in one hand and Carbury's horn-turned flute in the other. So it was. The opening act of House Illistyn's funeral began with the bang of Rickley's mace, crushing Priestess Shurvyrae's nape.
A muffled crack ad-libbed the bang as Rickley's roguish perk activated, drawing the ambient arcana through her weapon to add a jolt of power to the wake of Rickley's super-strength. As I did with the fall of each house, I alter my perception of time to watch the energy fall down her spine, crushing and pulverizing each vertebrae until her body absorbed its fill of kinetic energy and released the excess out of the other side.
As Rickley followed through, the oppressive radiance of Aufa's domain became overcast with the priestesses mangled body releasing a pink mist to absorb the toxic light, obscuring the shotgun shower of spinal fragments peppering the umbral sarcophagi below. Those once trapped inside the library howled once it shrouded in darkness. They banged, and they broke out of their confines in droves, emerging as glimmering skeletons enveloped in umbral robes that flared as they flung themselves across the battlefield with the same burning gusto as Rickley's Bolero.
Having no apparent enemy, they stomped on Gerry's slime and they screamed in each other's faces, yipping and clicking until the Soul Celebrity above began the second and final act of House Illistyn's funeral.
"DEAD PARADE!"