STORM DRIVEN
I must admit I don't expect anyone to ever read this, because I think I'm the only person who's ever played this game. But what the hell. I enjoyed writing it.
The mage stands with his back to the cliff edge, and pays no attention to the sky splitting with lightning behind him.
He has his own personal storm to worry about.
He stands not completely still, because occasionally a muscle will jump in his gauntlet-bound arm, or his booted foot will scrape the ground like a bull about to charge. The eye-sockets in the ugly, shaped metal mask that covers his face glow like an inferno.
The mage's name is Krobelus, and once he was Hierophant of the god Urath, a visionary with natural powers and uncanny determination. Now he barely recalls the man he used to be. He only remembers the anger.
He had always been angry, even when he was very small. At the vague recollection of his humanity his hands under the torn sky glow with purple mage-fire, coloured like a fresh bruise. This is a death-spell, one of the most difficult to learn in necromancy, but whether Krobelus is considering using it on himself or on another is unclear.
Another moment passes. The thunder growls over the horizon. This storm is not natural, any more than the storm that the mage carries within him like a cancer. The Tempest took Krobelus, drove his soul away and left him instead in the control of a demon none could master…
None save Maia, Queen of Halassar.
The mage-flame flickers and vanishes from Krobelus' palms, and abruptly his body relaxes, slumps, almost as if whatever adrenaline force has been holding him up till now has lost its grip on him. He reaches up for the metal mask, pulls the catches, and lets it fall away from his face. The demon glare in the sockets fades as the mask lies restless in his hands.
He is, perhaps, younger than you would have expected him to be. His skin under the livid sky is white and haunted, and his eyes a shade of purple so dark they are almost black. In any case his pupils are immensely wide, eclipsing any colour as he turns and stares up, as if for the first time, into the maelstrom.
He hates it almost as much as he hates himself. Unsurprising, considering that now Krobelus the mage and the Tempest are practically one and the same. It is a cruel master to its miserable host. His body has already been battered beyond redemption, despite his considerable skills in healing.
As if reminded, Krobelus gestures with a long white hand and raises a curl of bright golden healing fire around himself. The spell insinuates itself under his armour, absorbing into his skin, but gives little comfort: all the damage wrought in his mind is beyond even a neuromancer's skill to repeal. He has been casting this spell regularly since the insanity began, but it has been no good.
scrape-stamp
His feet betray his discomfort as he waits for Neru and the Unseen to arrive. He knows all too well that they are coming - the Tempest whispers to him, its breath poisonous in his head.
He also knows, with the clarity only a necromancer can possess, that he is going to die.
Once I could have been great -
The thought flares like a lit match in his ruined mind, and is snuffed just as quickly. He remembers the Sepulchre, his incarceration in Induval, the agony of the device employed by the overlord of Galdyr to hold a mage as powerful as he captive. He remembers joining with his rescuers, who were once his sworn foes, fighting alongside them, healing them. And all the while the storm had been growing in his head like a cloud of ink in water, until it could not be contained any longer, and in the outside realm of Aosi it had not allowed him the freedom of his own will any further.
Then swathes of blankness - something about an attack? He vaguely recalls conjuring an army of hideous creatures, sending them into the badlands, but nothing more.
The Tempest roars. Krobelus hears what it hears: the light step of the pirate prince, accompanied by the heavy, laborious tread of Morbazan. Perhaps the Unseen will have brought that ridiculously oversized hammer to try and squash him with. And the Prince…well, really, who uses their hair as an offensive weapon anyway?
He rises onto the balls of his feet, the awful red light of the Eye of the Storm catching ugly gleams on his black metal armour, and swings his staff once, twice, in readiness. The metal rod hums as it cuts the air. He is going to die and he knows it - but he is, after all, a warrior mage and will not go down easily. And who knows? Maybe he has a few tricks up his gauntlet that will surprise Neru. Maybe even a fatal surprise.
They are very close now.
They will try and dissuade you, the voice of the Tempest whispers as Krobelus crouches defensively, spells in potentia boiling around him. Do not let them. You are mine. You are my mage. You will not weaken.
You cannot change your mind now...
And as Krobelus chokes out the words that seem to rise automatically to his lips in response to Neru's hail, he sees in his mind's eye the beating of Urath's wings against the storm and prepares to meet his fate.
There! Now that's out of my system, I can get back to Raziel, maybe. And if anyone IS reading this, more about Krobelus and the game that surrounds him can be found at Summoner 2.com.