Sealed to the Mandate

The stories and lives of the Grim. ((Roleplaying Stories and In Character Interactions))
Malhavik
Posts: 46

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Malhavik »

With soul shards replaced, Malhavik strode back towards the chaotic cell. He spied Shaelie upon the stairs before the room, but continued past without acknowledgement. Acherontia was who currently occupied his mind, and her slim outline was just through the door.

"Lady Acherontia, I have come to understand you may have some insight into remedying this debacle?"
Malhavik
Posts: 46

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Malhavik »

Malhavik studied the shard Acherontia held briefly. He was interrupted by the sudden realization that his ward was still feeding on fel, despite Acherontia's soul filtering and pilfering.

"The body..." He thought.

"Acherontia! The body still writhes with filth. He had a moment of clarity just before the explosion, told us to find the first high inquisitor, that she would take us to a tower where he drank his doom. What did he mean? " He asked calmly.
User avatar
Inzema
Lost
Posts: 407
Location: Colorady
Contact:

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Inzema »

Qarosimae watched as Acherontia took Khorvis' soul from his corrupted body. She watched as Cen disappeared. She stepped to one side to observe as Malhavik returned to talk with Acherontia. Her sword hummed in its sheath, the semi-sentient weapon calling for release, and Qarosimae wrapped a hand around the hilt to silence it.

"I can provide teleportation to the general locale once I have a target to do so to."
"If I can't eat it, ssscrew it, sssell it, or ussse it to blow sssomething up, then what ussse isss it?" ~Inzema
User avatar
Aureilya
Lost
Posts: 2141

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Aureilya »

Shaelie had lowered herself to a seated crouch on the stairwell. Her legs tucked beneath her, she balanced on the balls of her feet, one hand wrapped in a death-grip on the railing. She hadn't moved since the initial explosion of fel, except to briefly glance up whenever someone passed her. Torn somewhere between horror and fascination- her morbid curiosity had won out, keeping her rooted to the stairs where she could listen. And if she peeked around the corner, she could see the others gathered outside the cell where Khorvis was.

She wasn't hiding, and she wasn't leaving. But nor had she quite made up her mind to actually leave her temporary shelter and join the rest.
User avatar
Khorvis
Member
Posts: 1745
Location: Lincroft, NJ

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Khorvis »

[[ A sonic accompaniment. To be followed throughout the consequent visions. ]]

A dull suffuse of violet light drifted in hazy repose against the blackness. Were there ears to hear, the muffled discord of a breathless organ would remind the senses of roses in decay, their sickly sweet disintegration a cloying reminiscence of the final corpse-filled houses of Lordaeron before the Scourge dismantled any last shred of order. That same sense of impending fate, verging on panic, hung in the void that slowly, achingly, began to take form and substance.

The flame of a single candle flared to life and Khorvis opened his eye.

He lay upon an altar of human stonework, clothed in old leathers and anointed in the oil of cloves. A funeral shroud of dusty linen hovered some few feet above the orc’s supine form and floated unfettered ceiling-ward as Khorvis sat forward, swinging his bare feet over the block’s side. As the High Inquisitor came to unease with this distant consciousness, more waxen candles flickered to life in fitful response and circular bearing. This ring of votives pierced the violet fog and illuminated the environs with two-dimensional relief.

Wrought iron framed murky glass windows of indigo. The walls were of a dark wood, though in the pale light they may have been stone, and faded into shadowy recesses. Dominating the interior spanned a great series of staircases, crisscrossing and spiraling in all direction to form landings and alcoves, bespeckled with similar casements that gazed outwards into a confusing sea of unconnected landscapes. Where one vision beheld a war-torn battlefield, another some few flights above spied a wilting grove. The black iron stair system appeared to twist both upwards and down a vast hollow that, despite nearing a cylindrical nature, possessed windows that should have looked inwards upon the steps themselves. Instead, these portals too displayed an otherworld of a haunting familiarity.

Taking a tentative step from his bier, Khorvis moved across the cold stone floor. For an instant, the altar flickered out of existence to be replaced with the wooden stool of the Grim garrison’s prison cell. A shudder of candlelight and the altar resumed its place. In similar obtrusiveness were the viewports and the pathways to their observance. Where one moment a stairway might curve up, to the right, and deposit the traveler upon a landing of book-filled cases and a window to the Black Morass, the next glance would follow the same crooked and barbed path down into an unlit recess of unremembered impulses.

Tugging at his braided goatee, the orc steeled himself and strode the few feet from his resting place to the nearest window. Though the air of the chamber held no ambient feeling of uncomfortable temperature, the floor leeched the warmth of his feet with numbing constancy. It was as if the material nature of the prison served as only a conduit for the force of presence – within and without.

Khorvis knelt and pressed his forehead against the foggy glass of the oriel. The visions beyond clawed at the edges of his being.
Image
User avatar
Khorvis
Member
Posts: 1745
Location: Lincroft, NJ

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Khorvis »

The plough horse buckled beneath his weight and fell to the dusty earth in a heap of ragged flesh. This was not the first time that she collapsed for the strain of her burden, but it would be the last. With a withering neigh, the broken beast discharged her final breath in an unceremonious death rattle and surrendered this mortal coil.

Kicking the equine corpse in its slatted ribs, Khorvis hastily unbuckled his saddlebags of meager rations and holstered the greataxe, gifted by his husband. The handle had grown smooth with the labor of years toiling for distant masters, but the blade retained an edge honed by love and care. Simon’s present would never grow pitted by the stain of time.

Or so Khorvis hoped as the stormclouds of uncompromising ruin closed over the bent pines of Tirisfal. He stopped mid-rifle and let his attention sight down the dirt road to a shambling ensemble of the diseased-ones. Neighbors and foreigners alike, they trod forward with the same unstoppable gait that had overrun the homestead and Simon.

The Scourge would yet have his flesh.

Shouldering the rest of his supplies, Khorvis limped onwards into the craggy demesne of the great bats and feral hounds that haunted the dark hours of fellow farmers. If there would be any safety in this world beset by foes, it would be holed up in the cliffs overlooking the Great Sea. May be there could be scratched some meager life…

The fearful orc made his way across a stretch of mossy outcroppings until the cliffworks became too convoluted to navigate in terms lateral. Only pathways vertical could harbor escape. Ascending the rockface in a mad scramble, Khorvis breached the lip of the final ledge between himself and the nearing waters. The twisted voices of the undead sailed upwards upon scouring winds and begged the attention of their prey.

Khorvis fell upon his back against the Great Sea and watched as a host of plagued ones crested the cliffside. A horror to register, the swarm bore the faces and likeness of Grim, so dear to his former being. Valindria, a priestess considerate of his frailties, now rotted and maligned, hungering for the flesh she once mended. Mohan, the hunter who once guided the orc’s blade through the Inquisition, now tracking his final steps. Even bold Squizzle, wrapped in the Scalp banner, shuffled with mindless intent upon his position.

And at the head of this rotting brigade bounded a degenerate tauren, encircled by the barbed chains of the Lash. Awatu gibbered a fel-twisted madness as his clawed hooves pounded the frost-hardened earth. The Scourge wailed in victory and closed in. The stormclouds upended their carriage and all turned to sodden ash.



Khorvis shoveled at the empty stone floor with his hands, desperately attempting to retrieve his innards and return them to his sundered torso. The undead horde had rent such horror in his chest…

There was nothing to recover. The High Inquisitor knelt alone in the violet haze of his prison. Only the warmthless light of candelabras greeted his returning wakefulness, and as the visceral terror of the oriel’s vision receded from the immediacy of his conscience, so too returned the garbled words of the twisted comrades who had beset upon his ethereal body.

“Failure.” “Mistake.”

“I have a vision.” “A vision of a world where we are the rightful rulers. Where Shu'halo, Orc, Troll, and all other members [of the Horde] may sleep and night and not live in fear of what enemies may arrive upon the next day.”

There had been a time when Khorvis too possessed a vision. One moment it was there, an immovable truth stretching back to the very beginning of his kind. The next, it was a wisp of smoke and circumstance. Time and conflict had a way of twisting all sorts of … things. It kept slipping away, out of reach, slithering away through these damned purple-lit halls. He gathered himself and started up the staircases, still clutching his stomach in hesitance.



Some hours later, the orc chanced upon a viewport unlike any previously bypassed. Looking outwards, he watched an exchange between several robed Grim. The conversation was heated, but purposeful, and yet the stench of fear still hung in the prison cell. A dungeon? This time they did not seek his flesh, but a tower. A faint memory tickled at the back of Khorvis’s mind.

“Drank his doom?” Acherontia questioned. It all came rushing back to the late High Inquisitor. He dashed for the stairwell, taking the steps three at a time.
Image
User avatar
Lilliana
Member
Posts: 766

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Lilliana »

As Shaelie had not run when Lilliana had protectively and fearfully grabbed her arm, neither did Lilliana. She remained with the elf, watching alongside the huntress in her hidden corner. Her concern for the High Inquisitor at it's height. It was well know that Lilliana often wore her heart right on her sleeve, where it bleed quite openly onto the floor, creating a hazard.

Lilliana was never a healer or a mender, even when it came to souls and the mind, to which shadow priests could work with. Messing with the commander of Sanctuary, Julilee's mind was a rare occurance, to which results Lilliana now questioned. She would clearly leave this to the warlocks and others present. However, she would never be able to bring herself to leave. She had asked Awatu that she be present in observing Khorvis's care. And now, here she was.


(( Very cool Khorvis, just had to comment:
There had been a time when Khorvis too possessed a vision. One moment it was there, an immovable truth stretching back to the very beginning of his kind. The next, it was a wisp of smoke and circumstance. Time and conflict had a way of twisting all sorts of … things. It kept slipping away, out of reach, slithering away through these damned purple-lit halls.
))
User avatar
Awatu
Member
Posts: 2458

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Awatu »

Awatu examined the soul shard in his hand, having taken it from the small Forsaken. It was like any other, though only a master of the craft would be able to distinguish it from another. Within his mind, Awatu held onto the faintest fears of what Khorvis may be facing within his own troubled psyche. The Orc was once a stalwart bulwark of The Mandate. Immovable and impenetrable, and now reduced to a simple soul crystal and a nameless abomination of flesh and fel energy. A concern of the vulnerabilities within The Grim floated into Awatu's thoughts.

The reliance of tools weakens us. We should be stronger. We are stronger. Tools are to be used, but not to replace us. We become dependent. We grow complacent. We grow weaker.

Glancing at the individuals conversing, Awatu places the soul shard within a pouch underneath his armor. He will ponder later. For now, the... thing within the cell appeared to be properly contained. For now. In one way or another, the fel cloud of corruption that had infected Khorvis now appears to seek other hosts. Or to gain sentience. Or... something else. He did not know. What he did know was that action must be taken now. An order was given for a portal to the High Inquisitor's chambers.

"Time dwindles. We must ensure his own doom does not fall onto us."
User avatar
Aureilya
Lost
Posts: 2141

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Aureilya »

Shaelie listened, and then wordlessly glanced at Lilliana. She had heard mention that they would go to the High Inquisitors chambers. Shaelie knew she had no entry into the private quarters of the Grim leadership, so she remained where she was, feet tucked beneath her.
User avatar
Inzema
Lost
Posts: 407
Location: Colorady
Contact:

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Inzema »

Qarosimae nodded, once to Acherontia. She knew exactly the mathematics required to create such a portal. She glanced askance to Awatu, then called forth her power and ripped open a hole in space which led directly to the office of the inquisition. Qarosimae stepped through, into a place both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
"If I can't eat it, ssscrew it, sssell it, or ussse it to blow sssomething up, then what ussse isss it?" ~Inzema
User avatar
Neevah
Member
Posts: 1049
Location: Duson, LA

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Neevah »

The office of the Inquisition had some semblance of order to it, thankfully. Ruuki had taken the liberty of sorting through Khorvis' paperwork in search of Supplicant information, and she'd pulled all of those from the massive pile of scraps, scribbles and nonsense that had overflowed his massive desk. She'd divided the work between herself and Lilliana, and though she couldn't say what the Troll had done with her share, the stack of paperwork from Khorvis sat in a neat pile on Ruuki's desk, separate from the Supplicants she handled from the beginning of their Inquisitions.

The remaining mass of nonsense and crudely drawn Orc genitalia (and some was just naaasty) she'd simply put in a box and left on the High Inquisitor's chair. She figured that someone who knew what they were looking for would want all of it. She only hoped that they'd have the fortitude to sort it all, and barring that, at least scrub themselves raw in a hot spring somewhere.
User avatar
Khorvis
Member
Posts: 1745
Location: Lincroft, NJ

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Khorvis »

The scent of decaying rose petals had become a noxious oppression. Khorvis’s belabored breath sucked in the air of rotting plant matter and nearly gagged the warrior as he stopped to rest against an iron banister. For days it seemed as if he had been climbing this blasted madhouse, and though hunger strangely did not plague his gut, the panic of his utter shame being outed by the cadre of investigative Grim gnawed at his stomach - far more painfully than any campaign’s privations.

How could he have been such a blight-addled fool? Squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his jaw, Khorvis continued his ascent through the Escherian limbo. Though little differentiated the endless progression of landings, some windows continued to display the progress of his guildmates. They moved as if mired in time, a slow-motion play of grotesque rendition. Khorvis kept consistent count of these scenes and used them to chart his progress, much like his fellow Horde tracked the strange stars of the Great Sea on their voyage to Zul’dare. Finally he came to a familiar sight and his heart fell into his stomach.

The same altar from which he awoke lay ahead, barren and canopied by the same funeral shroud.

Howling in mad frustration, Khorvis ripped the cloth from the air and flung it into a nearby candelabra. The stand fell to the stone floor in a clatter as the linen caught aflame, intensifying the aroma of death and sending up sooty black smoke through the eternal chamber. The orc’s wet eyes followed the reek upwards, attempting to fathom how these stairs could have possibly curved back around and beneath their origin.

“The fel take it all!” He wept, and crawled on all fours to the half circle of a tiny violet viewport at ground level. Exhausted and bereaved, he collapsed and stared blankly into what resolved to be a deep blue sky…

...

Eagles wheeled high overhead in a cloudless expanse. The salt spray of the Great Sea carried over Darrow Hill and her thick grasses. Hillsbrad in summer was a paradise of temperate restraint, ablossom with wildflowers and the dappled shade of Alterac’s pines. Here there lightly trod a lone stag through the brush, and at some distance down the sloping earthen fingers, a farmer’s cart could be spied trucking along a dirt road to the hamlet of Southshore.

Khorvis reclined against a massive boulder, warmed by the noonday sun, and let both of his eyes wander over the verdant greenery. The picturesque landscape complimented the wholeness of his youthful body. With both hands folded in his lap, he grinned in what he thought might be earnest contentment. What could be more rewarding than this free land in its own natural harmony?

And yet still, there nagged at the back of his mind some lingering doubt, that something was not quite right. Was it guilt? What was that task he had forgotten back in town? A fly buzzed over his snout and he brushed the insect away. Another, then several more, landed upon his simple leathers, attracted to the foulness of something nearby. Leaning forward, Khorvis glared into the grass at his feet.

There, fly-covered and rotting in the afternoon heat, was a small pile of his own flesh, bloody and swollen. The skin of the left half of his own face stared back up at the orc, and where the eye should have been was stabbed a long dagger, forged of Blackrock ore. Unsheathing the blade from the wet earth, Khorvis blinked at a weapon he recalled as once being in his possession.

The edges of a black tide licked at his feet and the wave receded across rocky sand. Vision swept forward with the sea’s retreat and resolved back into the monocular. Khorvis found himself at the ocean’s edge, and the depths called his name seductively. The hole in his honor and all of this boundless shame could be drowned swiftly in her dark currents. All of those villagers of Brill demanded justice. Where the dagger failed, the Great Sea could succeed and wash away all of the veteran’s crimes. The night sky would shroud this final voyage.

A little voice rose up inside of Khorvis and repeated a familiar speech. Though the words belonged to Awatu, the speaker held the same timbre of a long dead brother. Wren’s voice echoed the core failing in his brother’s shame.

“A vision of a world in which the Horde survives.”

There was so much left to finish. The great task of the Mandate lay incomplete, and though the lives of many innocents may lie at his feet, Khorvis was sealed to defend tenfold, a hundredfold that number. He would atone for his wrongs when at last there was Peace.

“He must remain alive.”

Stopping waist deep in the tides of darkness, Khorvis knew truth when he heard it. With a mighty heavy, the warrior flung the sacrificial dagger out into the Great Sea which swallowed it noiselessly. The water began to reflect an orange light from the North.

Southshore was aflame. A war party of Blackrock fists marched through the streets, tossing torches into shops and onto thatched roofs. The corpses of villagers lay scattered about, cut down in their panicked flight, and a row of shackled human footmen knelt with bowed heads. As if hewing lumber, a massive grunt moved down the line with a greataxe, decapitating each captive and spilling their entrails out about the village centre.

Wasting no more time with self-doubt, Khorvis moved through the burning streets. The glint of violet had caught his eye from afar, and dodging the roving bands of Blackrock without interference, he searched through the growing inferno for his escape.

A lone human guard leapt out from a shadowed alleyway and fearfully swung his broadsword in a wild arc at a flatfooted Khorvis. The orc raised the cauterized stump where his right hand had once been and deflected the blade, leaving an agonizing gash. Before the footman could regain his balance, Khorvis rushed forward and caught his adversary’s neck with a deathgrip.

He stared into the cowed pinkskin’s eyes as the air was cut off from a snapping larynx. This was his purpose. To feel the flesh of those who would threaten his comrades split beneath his bare hand. The breaking of hostile bones and strangled death throes were his true siren’s songs. And the muse of his blade would be the last light of life fading from those who had once dominated his growing clan.

Khorvis glanced down to his hand and the ruin of muscle and sinew that had been the human’s neck. The footman’s head fell to the burning earth, completely severed from the body. When its roll came to a stop, a violet light reflected from the metal visor. Spinning around, Khorvis saw the bay window of Southshore’s tavern lit with the same blasted purple light of his prison.

“Enough of these visions! I do no longer be the captive of this fel Nether! Lok’tar ogar!”

Picking up the fallen footman’s broadsword, Khorvis charged through the window with the shattering of glass.
Image
Malhavik
Posts: 46

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Malhavik »

The door came down hard, but Malhavik never heard the crash. He was transfixed. Something marvelous was up those stairs, and it called to him incessantly. He felt as if gravity had shifted, to pull him up and towards whatever terrible, beautiful embrace awaited him. The words of his fellows fell upon deaf ears, and before he realized it, he was already rapidly climbing the stairs.
User avatar
Aureilya
Lost
Posts: 2141

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Aureilya »

Listening to Achernotia, Shaelie almost faltered. She might be brave at times, but she wasn't fearless. And Achernotia's warnings scared her. It would be easy to stay behind, and not follow through the portal. She didn't understand fel magic, and the things she had seen in Khorvis's cell frightened her.

But she had a duty, she reminded herself. And too much was at stake. She had come this far. There was no backing out now.

Her eyes were downcast, following Achernotia's warning about the window. But when Malhavik began to quickly ascend the stairs, she scowled. She wasn't sure if he was willfully ignoring her warning, or if something greater was taking control of his senses. Two quick steps, and she was barging up the stairs behind him. Reaching out, one hand wrapped around his ankle and jerked up and back while at the same time she threw her shoulder into the back of his legs, attempting to drive him to his knees before he could reach the top.
User avatar
Inzema
Lost
Posts: 407
Location: Colorady
Contact:

Re: Sealed to the Mandate

Unread post by Inzema »

Qarosimae ignored Acherontia's warnings. Whatever was up there, she was confident she could handle it. What she was worried about was letting either of the warlocks up there, so when Malhavik started up the stairs with the fervor of a madman, she was already calling forth the flames to stop him. Fortunately for Malhavik, Shaelie stopped him first, so Qarosimae simply stepped over the tangle of hunter and warlock like they were detritus on the road and continued to the top of the staircase.

And wasn't entirely prepared for what she found there.

She had been in this tower before. The Inquisition had been hers, once, but she had remained, for the most part, out of it. The place had always caused enough distraction that she could not work, and now it was worse. She steeled herself and focused her mind on the task at hand, the books. A glance at them allowed her to memorize the pages they were open to and the order arranged, and she snatched them from the table and left the room, the cacophony of voices calling to her held off through will and determination.
"If I can't eat it, ssscrew it, sssell it, or ussse it to blow sssomething up, then what ussse isss it?" ~Inzema
Post Reply