The Romancer Onyxbane
Episode Thirteen:
The Twilight Cultist camp was a series of crude tents, supply wagons and bonfires clustered around spooky burnt orange crystals that jutted violently up out of the gray ground. A kind of thick red vapor emanated from the crystals, and Wisthera reported to Willypearl, Onyxbane, and the novice priestess Windsong that she'd seen warlocks and their demon pets guarding the stones. While scouting for Opalbane, Wisthera had also observed cultists wandering about in dazed circles. It was like they were all possessed by some unknown force and went dumbly about their simple tasks, delivering texts to their fellows, and patrolling the warlocks whose hands were busy siphoning some kind of green magic from the crystal. These casters seemed to remain in a trancelike state, no matter who walked by them, but Wisthera warned that as a rogue, she'd rather sap someone and keep them incapacitated than take the chance that they'd care whether you were beating up their friend or not.
"Opalbane is locked in some kind of pattern of her own." Wisthera explained to them. "She wanders, always with her shadowform up, in a counter clockwise path around the crystal in the middle, and then at the longest part of her wandering, leaves the warlocks in the center and walks across a naked stretch of earth before weaving through the cultists in their camps. I think if we could intercept her there, we have the greatest chance of taking her with the least amount of suspicion."
"Impressive, Wisthera." Onyxbane scratched the close cut beard on his chin. "But we're going to have to clear out the cultists in the nearest camp first. They form a kind of ring around the warlocks in the middle, and we can't even get that close unless they are out of the way."
"I can sheep a few of them as we go, to reduce the number of people we have to fight at any one time." Willypearl offered.
They all crouched behind a black pillar of rock not too far away from the camp. The priestess was shadowmelded nearby, keeping a lookout. Onyxbane was surprised at how well everyone was getting along, considering how he'd come close to sleeping with two women in the group who had good reasons to dislike each other, and the only other party member was a quiet young woman who'd seen far too much of Onyxbane's body and personality than he would have liked. But she seemed to have recovered pretty well from the other night.
"Well, we seem to be getting along well." Onyxbane observed hopefully.
"This is not the time Onyx." Willypearl snapped. Wisthera smiled a little and shot Onyxbane a knowing look that he tried to ignore.
"I believe that if Wisthera saps one man in the first camp, Willypearl can turn the other into a sheep, and then I can mind control the last. That way, we can focus on one enemy at a time." Everyone started at the young priestess who spoke up from the shadows. It was the most she'd said the entire trip, and she was so confident about it.
"I was about to suggest that I run in and—"
"No way, honey. Don't be a stupid warrior when it comes to this fight. You need to stay alive, so we're not taking any chances." Willypearl objected immediately to Onyxbane's plan.
"Yes, let us do what the priestess says. She must heal us afterall." Wisthera smiled and got to her feet. She was smiling quite a lot lately, and mostly in Onyxbane's direction. If Willypearl was annoyed about it at all, she didn't show it.
The first camp went well. Onyxbane ran in as soon as the first cultist, who was an orc in purple robes, was sheeped, and Wisthera successfully sapped the other one with her dagger. This one, a hammer wielding undead, bent over helplessly in a daze as Wisthera turned to help Onyxbane and Willypearl who fired away with frostbolts to keep the guy from running around. Then, they took care of the Undead, the person Willypearl had transformed into a sheep, and finally the novice priestess Windsong walked her mindcontrolled caster as far away from everyone else as possible, then let him go. Onyxbane and Wisthera were on him quickly, and with her stabbing him from behind and Onyxbane swinging his axe in the man's face, the last one went down fast.
At the next camp, Wisthera's sap missed, and she struggled with offtanking a rebel caster until the others finished up on Onyxbane's target. Perhaps Willypearl should have taken on the caster herself, since mages are best against other magic users, but Willypearl appeared to not have even considered it. Wisthera was swearing when it was done, but she couldn't accuse Willypearl of setting her up outright.
Then, they waited for Opalbane to approach.
"Why does she just wander in circles like that?" the novice priestess asked Wisthera.
Wisthera shrugged. "I think I overheard someone talking about how she was waiting for Zar'teaus."
"Who's that?"
"I'm not sure, but most likely it's an old god." Wisthera whispered back. Onyxbane raised a white eyebrow as he listened. "The Twilight Hammer devotes worshippers to various old gods. Perhaps Opalbane has been promised to the one they cal Zar'teus."
"Promised? That… doesn't actually sound bad." Onyxbane shrugged.
"Another way of saying that someone is engaged to be married in Common is to say that they've been promised." Willypearl grumbled. Onyxbane's eyes went wide and his knuckles went white from gripping his axe.
"Calm down, Onyx. We'll get her out of there before they do anything like that." Wisthera offered.
"She wouldn't agree to that!"
"You see how she walks; she's not herself and she has no choice. Now take care, she's coming close." The young priestess warned.
All the night elves, except for Willypearl shadowmelded because as a human, she couldn't. Instead, Willypearl waited for Opalbane to get into range. Opalbane looked nothing short of deadly. Her robes were a rich dark purple, but they glowed with the blue black shadow fire that burned off of her skin, through her clothes. The shadow did not harm her, but anyone who got too close could suffer a great deal. That was the most dangerous thing about shadowpriestesses, they weren't afraid of the darkest things in this world. Raised to heal and help others with the light, they saw the full truth of that holy power offered to them and rejected it completely. Their flesh burned, but that was of little concern to those who knew other horrors intimately and weren't afraid to use them to bend then break body, mind and soul.
Despite the fact that it was her friend before her, Willypearl bravely called up her polymorph spell. Then, rather comically, the tall darkly burning Night Elf turned into a smoky black sheep. Even forced into that form, Opalbane looked dangerous. Then, the novice Windsong blinked back into view as she called forth her most powerful holy fire spell, and Willypearl began to cast her most powerful fire spell that would light the ground ablaze. Onyxbane waited while Wisthera stealthed forward, and behind the sheep that was now his sister.
But, before Windsong's holy fire could hit, Opalbane dispelled the sheep from herself, and returned to her original form. Then, like lightning, she thrust a hand out to fragile Windsong and she arched her back screaming in pain. Onyxbane watched in horror as the vampiric embrace took hold of the unsuspecting novice, and she writhed in agony. Willypearl got her fire spell off just in time, and Opalbane visibly flinched as the flames shot up through her body. But she only flinched. The spell she cast on their inexperienced priestess restored Opalbane life even as they sought to weaken her. Weakening Opalbane would not be easy.
Walking slowly, purposefully, Opalbane thrust her hand out at Willypearl, hate full on her face, and the gentle mage recoiled back a step from the invisible burst of power.
"I've been silenced! I can't cast spells, and I'm useless to you now." Willypearl warned them, and took out her wand. But it was a mistake. Now, Opalbane knew that there were others there with the mage and priest who she could see. She turned away from Willypearl, searching for the inevitable rogue…
Wisthera broke stealth then and stunned Opalbane. "How much time do you need?" she shouted at Willypearl who shook her head. "The battle's over for me unless it lasts longer than it's supposed to."
Wisthera flipped her daggers around in her hand and they began to glow green with poison.
"Don't." Onyxbane warned her from where he was hiding, but it was too late. Wisthera stabbed just in time to get the slow poison into his sister, but then Opalbane arched her back and screamed. It was horrible, deafening, like when Priestess Feathershine had sent a psychic scream through Wisthera, Onyxbane, and all the sailors on deck weeks ago. Except for this time, no one had been warned to cover their ears, and even Onyxbane was startled out of his hiding place in the shadows. Everyone, even the suffering priestess Windsong was sent running, into the nearby camps, and the warlocks, and the orange crystal…
Opalbane watched them run, frowning darkly as she thrust her hands skyward and cast more painful spells on their little healer until she finally buckled and fell to the ground.
"Opalbane no!" Onyxbane panicked and charged out of the group of cultists he'd disturbed to his sister. He succeeded in stunning her for only a moment before she broke out of it and cast a painful spell on him as well. Onyxbane had good armor, and resisted a great deal of it, but it still hurt. After a time, he could not hide how he suffered and he cried out to his big sister,
"Opal! Stop! Sissy, please… I can't take it any more. You're killing me!"
Wisthera vanished, then came up behind Opalbane again, and tried to stun her once more. Opalbane was bent pathetically, enduring the rogue's desperate thrusts with the green bleeding daggers, when finally she broke free of the stun and cast another painful spell on Wisthera, who cried out, but could not stealth again to get away.
Willypearl cast useless after useless arcane missile from her magic wand that resembled a little tree branch. Her frost armor helped to slow down the attackers from the other camps who targeted her first, but it only worked when they came close enough, which meant the mage was taking far more physical damage than she was meant to. Willypearl was going to die as well.
And who would resurrect them when they failed? Their one healer was already gone.
"You will feel my master's wrath. Zar'teaus will feast on your worthless bodies on my wedding day." Opalbane spoke, but there were many voices coming from her, and she sounded like many terrible monsters were trapped inside of her, and trying to talk all at once.
The cultists fell upon the others, but when they tried to take down Onyxbane, the warrior, Opalbane screamed at them and they ran from the shadowpriestess in fear.
"Sissy, please…" Onyxbane pleaded. Opalbane seemed not to hear him though, and reached out her hand, fixated on his face.
"Why do you look like me?" She screamed at him in her many voices. It was painful to hear. "Do you mean to mock me?"
"No, I'm your brother Onyxbane. I love you."
"I do not know Onyxbane." She droned on, "I know only the great god Zar'teus. I will be his anon, and you will fail to keep him from me. I shall help him re-enter the world from the dark depths the Titans cast him to. And together, we will raze this ungrateful world…"
Onyxbane struggled to get to his sister, to hold her, and make her stop, but she thrust her hand out to him, and a thread of blue energy seared through his chest and leaped through the air into the palm of Opalbane's outstretched hand. As he walked, Onxybane slowed. Each step was more painful, the journey to his sister increasingly arduous. His life, draining… she would surely kill him, and then within days, the old god would destroy her. Finally, there would be none of their family left after even those two little ones survived the Sundering in Felwood all those years ago.