Post by Barnaby Cuthbert on Oct 13, 2006 10:27:45 GMT -8
OoC>>This is the final part of the 5 part series. My apologies as this is really long.<<OoC
The Shadowlands
Exact Location Unknown
The priest lay in a crumpled heap at Scion's feet, his body bruised and broken. Gregor was equally damaged, his torpid body twisted at odd angles.
Gunn lay nearby. Scion 's heart lifted when he saw the Brujah climb groggily to his feet.
The Ventrue crusader Albrecht Massovia was nowhere to be seen. Scion thought back upon his last sight of him, torn from the earth by the Maelstrom, his body burning, flung like a comet into the deep black sky, a burning seraph falling from grace.
Gunn looked around at the black clay plain. In the distance, the great maw of the Maelstrom crackled and boiled. Spectral winds battered the broken coterie. The door to the world, the tattered remains of the Gaslight Lounge, even the broken reflection of Seattle had disappeared. They were marooned in the deep black chill of the Deadlands, cast-aways on the shores of the dead.
Lost.
"Shit." said Gunn.
Scion could only nod. He knelt before the body of the priest. His body was bruised and broken, but shallow breath still escaped his lips. He looked small, pale and cold. Something flashed in Scion's mind, an image of his father, cowering before him. Scion blinked the image away. He lay his long jacket over the street preacher's cool skin.
I'll deal with the Masquerade breach later. No one here is going to care. He saved us all. The whole city. If that tear had opened fully, the lands of the dead would have spilled out upon the world. The dead would have walked. Ghosts would have had free reign to exact their cold revenge upon the living.
Gunn picked up the half-moon of his battle axe from the cracked plain and drew in his surroundings more closely. In the distance were the ghostly spires of a strange city, which in the distance appeared to be a rough mush of other cites tumbled together. It was part Rome and New York with bits of St Louis and Constantinople thrown in. The earth of the Deadlands was volcanic black and cracked in patches like the flash-dried desert outside of LA. Here and there in the vast plain a bit of something lay half buried in the earth; a child’s building block, a pocket watch, a hand mirror, a picture frame. Gunn didn't know what these bits and baubles jammed into the clay meant, but he could feel what they were: the flotsam of ended lives teetering on the edge of oblivion's maw. He wondered if that would be all that was left of him, one night, a forgotten marker in a vast plain.
His reverie and concern were broken by movement on the plain.
"Scion! Man, uh... looks like we got company."
Scion's grip tightened on his sword. From the earth rose the now familiar milky white forms of the dead. Scion recognized many of them as well: The Founders; Henry Yesler, once a mortal robber-baron of Seattle, then a Ventrue killer and politico, now one of the restless dead. Doc Maynard, Brujah vagabond and unabashedly amused sadist, who in his mortal years had protected Indians and whores equally as long as he'd gotten his cut. Arthur Denny, a religious man in life, a moralist among the immoral, twisted by Caine's curse and the Curse of the Gaslight Lounge into a warped shadow of himself, a specter of a Gangrel whose claws ached for blood. Other Wraiths rose beside them, low chuckles and growls passing between them.
"Wait," said Scion. "This doesn't have to be this way. The gate is closed, you've lost. We're trapped here. Neither of us have anything to gain by fighting. Let's stop this violence here. There has been enough death."
The challenging spirits hissed and roared, circling the Gangrel and Brujah and closing the distance between them.
[glow=white,2,300]Their flesh!
Thieves! Murderers! Feed them to the storm!
Kill the skinlanders!
Revenge for your sins!
Seattle belongs to us!
Your domain is built on our blood!
Oblivion is too good for them!
Kill them! Sell their skins to the Urserers![/glow]
Gunn and Scion stood back to back as the wraiths continued to circle them. The champion's blade still hummed with the holy blessing of the priest, and the arcane scrawls of Tremere blood magic. Gunn's axe also pulsed with holy power, though both blades grew fainter by the moment. The Founders stood outside the circle of wraiths egging them on, smug and hungry looks on their translucent faces.
"Or not." said Scion. He gave no order or cry to attack, but Gunn knew it was fight or die here, a world away from their own. The two Kindred leapt into the fray without another word.
Scion leapt through the ring of lesser wraiths at the nearest Founder, the black-robed form of Yesler, and cut him down in a single blow. His milk white face split and slid slowly apart in a horrifyingly slick bisection of ghost-flesh, then his body unraveled, and the former Kindred's screams filled the desolate battlefield with an unearthly gurgling howl of defeat.
The wraiths rallied, their faces twisting with rage and hate, desperate for revenge, and the battle was joined. Immediately Doc Maynard raised his hands and hissed an epitaph of revenge at the prone body of the priest. Time slowed as Scion turned to see the preacher's body burst into flames. The dull glow of their faith imbued weapons faded with his life. Wraith claws raked Scion's back and side, sparking off of his marble skin, tearing his clothing as a nearby ghost attacked him.
[glow=white,2,300]You can never leave this place.[/glow] it moaned.
Gunn stood now in the center of the greatest mass of ghosts and attempted to turn them aside with his axe. A forlorn woman moaned with hollow anger as a mottled-white child clung to her skirts. The child's features was a blur of shifting black eyes and it's too-large black gash of a mouth. It's head cocked at a wrong angle, it shambled after Gunn, bowed legs turned inward, it's short stubby fingers clutching and grasping at the tattered petticoats of it's mother. Something black and wet slid down it's pale, rubbery chin as it mewled in hunger.
Gunn defended himself as two wraiths struck at him with a quick slash of his full-moon axe blade. The ghosts expired, their milk-white skins unraveling and sloughing off of their translucent bones before disappearing.
Scion leapt again, this time at Doc Maynard. He couldn't let that cold blue fire touch either of them if they were to survive for any length of time here.
[glow=white,2,300]Nooo! You cannot end me![/glow] Shouted Doc Maynard as he spun apart like rotting spider silk. Scion got the sense that he'd had more to say, and to spite the heat of the battle at hand, felt something like a twinge of grief at the spectral creature's passing. This was a man once, and a Kindred afterward. Then a ghost, and finally, nothing.
Scion turned just in time to see Gunn cut the moaning mother down.
[glow=white,2,300]No...[/glow] She'd cried. [glow=white,2,300]He'll never know he had a son...[/glow]
Her warped child unraveled with her and seemed to float apart in burning pieces like so much charred newspaper.
Arthur Denny tore at Gunn with his claws, puncturing and tearing his flesh. Gunn didn't hesitate. With a mighty roar he raised his battle axe above his head and struck, but the axe buried itself in the Wraith's pallid flesh and did not give way. Scion leapt to his aid, finishing the elder with a slash that cut the creature's spine in half before the rest of him came undone.
The black plain was silent, save for the whimpering of a lone remaining spirit.
Scion and Gunn turned to the sound. The ghost of the young man trembled in fear.
[glow=white,2,300]Suh... stay away from me![/glow]
Gunn flipped his axe's blade around in his hands and moved toward the ghost, but Scion put a hand up to stop him.
"Wait," he said "Look, we don't want to hurt you."
[glow=white,2,300]Liar! You killed everyone![/glow]
"We were attacked!" Scion explained.
[glow=white,2,300]You came through the Veil!
You attacked FIRST![/glow] the ghost said, and grabbed one of the translucent swords from the cracked earth where it had fallen from the hands of one of the obliviated wraiths.
Sure... this time. Scion thought, but didn't voice it.
"Ok, sure, you have a point there, we attacked, but I'm not attacking now."
Scion lay his sword down on the ground in front of him, a gesture of good faith. The ghost obviously didn't know how to hold a sword, as it was held way out from his body awkwardly with both hands, and the ghost shifted into a stumbling low stance, shuffling from side to side like a crab.
"Please," Scion pleaded, "Just talk to me. Look, no sword."
The young man's eyes darted around nervously.
[glow=white,2,300]You... you're murderers!
Just like the one who killed her![/glow]
"You people tried to take over the land of the living. That's not how it works. You stay here, we stay there, got it?"
[glow=white,2,300]I just wanted to go home...
...and you ruined it!
Our only chance and YOU RUINED IT![/glow]
"Kid, what's your name?" Scion said, taking a step closer. The ghost backed up.
[glow=white,2,300]Words have power; I will not allow you such power over me![/glow]
"I don't want to have power over you. I just want to help you. Maybe we can help each other. You want to find someone who killed your love, I can help you!"
[glow=white,2,300]You're lying![/glow]
"No I'm not. Look, you don't know me. Help us and I'll help you."
[glow=white,2,300]I know you better than you think.
I can feel you...[/glow]
Scion's head ached. For a moment he was certain he felt a little child's fingers wrap around his hand. He jerked it away instinctively only to find it empty.
The young man pointed his sword at Scion.
[glow=white,2,300]I let you live... now get out of here...
Before I change my mind!"[/glow]
The young ghost turned to run... and came face to face with Gunn. The Brujah grabbed the ghost hard and slapped the sword out of his hands, pushing him to the ground and holding him by the shoulders. Scion knelt next to the frightened spirit.
"Help us find our way home and I'll help you. You have my word. I will find her killer."
But it was too late. The ghost had gone catatonic. He sat on the cold, black earth and hugged his knees to his chest, murmuring to himself. His eyes were far away, dreaming of a woman long dead.
After a moment, Scion and Gunn released their hold on the phantom, who remained rocking in the black, alone with his own hauntings. Images still swam half-seen in both of their eyes, and they were getting worse. The wraiths had done something to them somehow, and they didn't yet know what.
The body of the prone priest lay smoldering on the plain, an immolated corpse. The purple-blue ghost-fire had died with its Founder, as had the priest himself. Scion's jacket was a burned tatter. Not even enough of it remained over the body to hide the look of rictus horror on the blackened body.
The two champions dug the grave without a word and placed the body of the priest below the black clay earth. A wraithly sword served as a translucent cross and headstone.
"Thank you." Said Scion simply. Gunn was quiet.
A vampire climbed up out of the earth nearby and turned to dust as a blonde woman put a stake through his heart. Both disappeared as soon as Scion blinked. All of it hurt his head.
Gunn also stumbled a bit, as if seeing something else far away.
"Gunn I think..."
"Yeah, something's wrong. They did something to us... We need to get out of here. I want to leave NOW."
Scion looked around. Black plains stretched to the horizon in all directions.
"Gunn, we're trapped in the land of the dead. If you've got some idea how to get out of here I'm open to suggestions."
Gunn shuddered and turned as if hearing something.
"I don't care where we go, we just need to go."
Scion looked again at the horizon. To the west of them lay emptiness, slow rolling hills of dark plains scattered with a few jagged rocky protrusions. To the east lay a great and alien city, an amalgamation of ancient crumbling spires and parapets that seemed out of place and out of time. It was NOT Seattle, of that Scion was reasonably sure. Dead ahead, to the north lay the heart of the swirling Maelstrom, and... something else.
Yes, Scion could barely make out a thin ribbon of what appeared to be, just maybe, a road.
"That way.” Scion said, “Bring Croneweath." Scion said, utterly unsure of his choice.
Gunn picked up the torpored form of the Caitiff, Gregor Croneweath and slung him over his shoulder.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
The Shadowlands
Exact Location Unknown
The priest lay in a crumpled heap at Scion's feet, his body bruised and broken. Gregor was equally damaged, his torpid body twisted at odd angles.
Gunn lay nearby. Scion 's heart lifted when he saw the Brujah climb groggily to his feet.
The Ventrue crusader Albrecht Massovia was nowhere to be seen. Scion thought back upon his last sight of him, torn from the earth by the Maelstrom, his body burning, flung like a comet into the deep black sky, a burning seraph falling from grace.
Gunn looked around at the black clay plain. In the distance, the great maw of the Maelstrom crackled and boiled. Spectral winds battered the broken coterie. The door to the world, the tattered remains of the Gaslight Lounge, even the broken reflection of Seattle had disappeared. They were marooned in the deep black chill of the Deadlands, cast-aways on the shores of the dead.
Lost.
"Shit." said Gunn.
Scion could only nod. He knelt before the body of the priest. His body was bruised and broken, but shallow breath still escaped his lips. He looked small, pale and cold. Something flashed in Scion's mind, an image of his father, cowering before him. Scion blinked the image away. He lay his long jacket over the street preacher's cool skin.
I'll deal with the Masquerade breach later. No one here is going to care. He saved us all. The whole city. If that tear had opened fully, the lands of the dead would have spilled out upon the world. The dead would have walked. Ghosts would have had free reign to exact their cold revenge upon the living.
Gunn picked up the half-moon of his battle axe from the cracked plain and drew in his surroundings more closely. In the distance were the ghostly spires of a strange city, which in the distance appeared to be a rough mush of other cites tumbled together. It was part Rome and New York with bits of St Louis and Constantinople thrown in. The earth of the Deadlands was volcanic black and cracked in patches like the flash-dried desert outside of LA. Here and there in the vast plain a bit of something lay half buried in the earth; a child’s building block, a pocket watch, a hand mirror, a picture frame. Gunn didn't know what these bits and baubles jammed into the clay meant, but he could feel what they were: the flotsam of ended lives teetering on the edge of oblivion's maw. He wondered if that would be all that was left of him, one night, a forgotten marker in a vast plain.
His reverie and concern were broken by movement on the plain.
"Scion! Man, uh... looks like we got company."
Scion's grip tightened on his sword. From the earth rose the now familiar milky white forms of the dead. Scion recognized many of them as well: The Founders; Henry Yesler, once a mortal robber-baron of Seattle, then a Ventrue killer and politico, now one of the restless dead. Doc Maynard, Brujah vagabond and unabashedly amused sadist, who in his mortal years had protected Indians and whores equally as long as he'd gotten his cut. Arthur Denny, a religious man in life, a moralist among the immoral, twisted by Caine's curse and the Curse of the Gaslight Lounge into a warped shadow of himself, a specter of a Gangrel whose claws ached for blood. Other Wraiths rose beside them, low chuckles and growls passing between them.
"Wait," said Scion. "This doesn't have to be this way. The gate is closed, you've lost. We're trapped here. Neither of us have anything to gain by fighting. Let's stop this violence here. There has been enough death."
The challenging spirits hissed and roared, circling the Gangrel and Brujah and closing the distance between them.
[glow=white,2,300]Their flesh!
Thieves! Murderers! Feed them to the storm!
Kill the skinlanders!
Revenge for your sins!
Seattle belongs to us!
Your domain is built on our blood!
Oblivion is too good for them!
Kill them! Sell their skins to the Urserers![/glow]
Gunn and Scion stood back to back as the wraiths continued to circle them. The champion's blade still hummed with the holy blessing of the priest, and the arcane scrawls of Tremere blood magic. Gunn's axe also pulsed with holy power, though both blades grew fainter by the moment. The Founders stood outside the circle of wraiths egging them on, smug and hungry looks on their translucent faces.
"Or not." said Scion. He gave no order or cry to attack, but Gunn knew it was fight or die here, a world away from their own. The two Kindred leapt into the fray without another word.
Scion leapt through the ring of lesser wraiths at the nearest Founder, the black-robed form of Yesler, and cut him down in a single blow. His milk white face split and slid slowly apart in a horrifyingly slick bisection of ghost-flesh, then his body unraveled, and the former Kindred's screams filled the desolate battlefield with an unearthly gurgling howl of defeat.
The wraiths rallied, their faces twisting with rage and hate, desperate for revenge, and the battle was joined. Immediately Doc Maynard raised his hands and hissed an epitaph of revenge at the prone body of the priest. Time slowed as Scion turned to see the preacher's body burst into flames. The dull glow of their faith imbued weapons faded with his life. Wraith claws raked Scion's back and side, sparking off of his marble skin, tearing his clothing as a nearby ghost attacked him.
[glow=white,2,300]You can never leave this place.[/glow] it moaned.
Gunn stood now in the center of the greatest mass of ghosts and attempted to turn them aside with his axe. A forlorn woman moaned with hollow anger as a mottled-white child clung to her skirts. The child's features was a blur of shifting black eyes and it's too-large black gash of a mouth. It's head cocked at a wrong angle, it shambled after Gunn, bowed legs turned inward, it's short stubby fingers clutching and grasping at the tattered petticoats of it's mother. Something black and wet slid down it's pale, rubbery chin as it mewled in hunger.
Gunn defended himself as two wraiths struck at him with a quick slash of his full-moon axe blade. The ghosts expired, their milk-white skins unraveling and sloughing off of their translucent bones before disappearing.
Scion leapt again, this time at Doc Maynard. He couldn't let that cold blue fire touch either of them if they were to survive for any length of time here.
[glow=white,2,300]Nooo! You cannot end me![/glow] Shouted Doc Maynard as he spun apart like rotting spider silk. Scion got the sense that he'd had more to say, and to spite the heat of the battle at hand, felt something like a twinge of grief at the spectral creature's passing. This was a man once, and a Kindred afterward. Then a ghost, and finally, nothing.
Scion turned just in time to see Gunn cut the moaning mother down.
[glow=white,2,300]No...[/glow] She'd cried. [glow=white,2,300]He'll never know he had a son...[/glow]
Her warped child unraveled with her and seemed to float apart in burning pieces like so much charred newspaper.
Arthur Denny tore at Gunn with his claws, puncturing and tearing his flesh. Gunn didn't hesitate. With a mighty roar he raised his battle axe above his head and struck, but the axe buried itself in the Wraith's pallid flesh and did not give way. Scion leapt to his aid, finishing the elder with a slash that cut the creature's spine in half before the rest of him came undone.
The black plain was silent, save for the whimpering of a lone remaining spirit.
Scion and Gunn turned to the sound. The ghost of the young man trembled in fear.
[glow=white,2,300]Suh... stay away from me![/glow]
Gunn flipped his axe's blade around in his hands and moved toward the ghost, but Scion put a hand up to stop him.
"Wait," he said "Look, we don't want to hurt you."
[glow=white,2,300]Liar! You killed everyone![/glow]
"We were attacked!" Scion explained.
[glow=white,2,300]You came through the Veil!
You attacked FIRST![/glow] the ghost said, and grabbed one of the translucent swords from the cracked earth where it had fallen from the hands of one of the obliviated wraiths.
Sure... this time. Scion thought, but didn't voice it.
"Ok, sure, you have a point there, we attacked, but I'm not attacking now."
Scion lay his sword down on the ground in front of him, a gesture of good faith. The ghost obviously didn't know how to hold a sword, as it was held way out from his body awkwardly with both hands, and the ghost shifted into a stumbling low stance, shuffling from side to side like a crab.
"Please," Scion pleaded, "Just talk to me. Look, no sword."
The young man's eyes darted around nervously.
[glow=white,2,300]You... you're murderers!
Just like the one who killed her![/glow]
"You people tried to take over the land of the living. That's not how it works. You stay here, we stay there, got it?"
[glow=white,2,300]I just wanted to go home...
...and you ruined it!
Our only chance and YOU RUINED IT![/glow]
"Kid, what's your name?" Scion said, taking a step closer. The ghost backed up.
[glow=white,2,300]Words have power; I will not allow you such power over me![/glow]
"I don't want to have power over you. I just want to help you. Maybe we can help each other. You want to find someone who killed your love, I can help you!"
[glow=white,2,300]You're lying![/glow]
"No I'm not. Look, you don't know me. Help us and I'll help you."
[glow=white,2,300]I know you better than you think.
I can feel you...[/glow]
Scion's head ached. For a moment he was certain he felt a little child's fingers wrap around his hand. He jerked it away instinctively only to find it empty.
The young man pointed his sword at Scion.
[glow=white,2,300]I let you live... now get out of here...
Before I change my mind!"[/glow]
The young ghost turned to run... and came face to face with Gunn. The Brujah grabbed the ghost hard and slapped the sword out of his hands, pushing him to the ground and holding him by the shoulders. Scion knelt next to the frightened spirit.
"Help us find our way home and I'll help you. You have my word. I will find her killer."
But it was too late. The ghost had gone catatonic. He sat on the cold, black earth and hugged his knees to his chest, murmuring to himself. His eyes were far away, dreaming of a woman long dead.
After a moment, Scion and Gunn released their hold on the phantom, who remained rocking in the black, alone with his own hauntings. Images still swam half-seen in both of their eyes, and they were getting worse. The wraiths had done something to them somehow, and they didn't yet know what.
The body of the prone priest lay smoldering on the plain, an immolated corpse. The purple-blue ghost-fire had died with its Founder, as had the priest himself. Scion's jacket was a burned tatter. Not even enough of it remained over the body to hide the look of rictus horror on the blackened body.
The two champions dug the grave without a word and placed the body of the priest below the black clay earth. A wraithly sword served as a translucent cross and headstone.
"Thank you." Said Scion simply. Gunn was quiet.
A vampire climbed up out of the earth nearby and turned to dust as a blonde woman put a stake through his heart. Both disappeared as soon as Scion blinked. All of it hurt his head.
Gunn also stumbled a bit, as if seeing something else far away.
"Gunn I think..."
"Yeah, something's wrong. They did something to us... We need to get out of here. I want to leave NOW."
Scion looked around. Black plains stretched to the horizon in all directions.
"Gunn, we're trapped in the land of the dead. If you've got some idea how to get out of here I'm open to suggestions."
Gunn shuddered and turned as if hearing something.
"I don't care where we go, we just need to go."
Scion looked again at the horizon. To the west of them lay emptiness, slow rolling hills of dark plains scattered with a few jagged rocky protrusions. To the east lay a great and alien city, an amalgamation of ancient crumbling spires and parapets that seemed out of place and out of time. It was NOT Seattle, of that Scion was reasonably sure. Dead ahead, to the north lay the heart of the swirling Maelstrom, and... something else.
Yes, Scion could barely make out a thin ribbon of what appeared to be, just maybe, a road.
"That way.” Scion said, “Bring Croneweath." Scion said, utterly unsure of his choice.
Gunn picked up the torpored form of the Caitiff, Gregor Croneweath and slung him over his shoulder.
